O Vasily Sukhomlinsky I already wrote.

And recently his book "Letters to the Son" fell into my hands again. I took it from the children's library near the house, where I wrote down my baby - granddaughter. And there are many more books that I wanted to re-read.

What a joy it is to go to the library!

Sit in silence, sorting through old books. Rejoice when meeting familiar crusts and illustrations loved from childhood.

We have a library named after Matrosov next to our house. There was a similar one in my native Barabinsk. Nothing changed. Old shabby linoleum, racks that are many, many years old. And there are practically no fresh receipts. The library itself has been on the verge of closing for several years.

But this is a separate and very sad story.

Handing over books to my granddaughter, I decided to delve into books on psychology.

Then I came across a book Sukhomlinsky... Exactly the way I still studied at the Pedagogical Institute.

A front-line soldier, a real citizen, he devoted his whole life to school. Upbringing of the younger generation. Now it is even difficult to imagine how he would have perceived what is happening in Ukraine. Because he taught at a Ukrainian school and defended the Soviet Union from fascism.

But I will let go of politics. I am interested in him primarily as a father. The father of his children.

Who did he want them to be?

What did you teach?

Where did you see the value of life?

Sukhomlinsky- an atheist, a real communist, convinced that our Motherland is the best and is following the right path. It is only necessary that worthy citizens grow up in our country.

However, letting go of the ideology of that time, his letters to son do not lose their relevance.

This is a man-to-man conversation. Who is responsible for the country, family, and their future children. A conversation about morality, the purpose of man, his role on Earth, about love, about happiness.

See how actual it sounds: “Remember that early childhood - from the time the child realized himself, is a school of HEART. Creation, creation of goodness for people begins with the child's care for beauty and beauty. Everything that gives a person aesthetic pleasure, joy, has a miraculous educational power.

Let your family have a family holiday, on the day of which the child creates joy for the parents. We had an Autumn Rose Festival. You remember him, of course. There is no more happiness for a parent than to see the shining eyes of a child who himself has grown a rose and is now picking it to give it to the mother. This is the joy of doing good for people.

15 commandments Sukhomlinsky on the organization of time have not lost their relevance today.

These are the rules of life that ultimately lead to results.

Unfortunately, I could not find on the Internet who the children eventually became. Sukhomlinsky. But for some reason I am sure that they have grown up worthy people.

"Letters to the Son"- I think they will remain an important reading for those who care about the future of children. Who is seriously worried about the soul of the child, and not about how to please him. More precisely, pay off, as it often happens today.

I re-read the familiar book with great joy.

Today, when we are all on the Internet, maybe it makes sense to start writing again. letters to my children. Maybe this way they will hear us better?

In addition to all the praise for this book, I can add mine. This book is suitable not only for boys, but also for girls, undoubtedly, people of all ages. The book tells about such moments of our life to which we have already ceased to pay attention, about what we have forgotten, in the race for external success and "a minute of glory".

The further I read the book, the more I became convinced that it would be nice if this book was studied at home by parents with their children or at school, discussing each chapter and clarifying the child's own opinion on a particular topic.
I got great pleasure reading these "moralizing instructions", which are dear to my heart and in tune with my soul. I seem to be re-tuning the strings of my soul according to the ethical tuning fork of this knowledge and wisdom of life. I regained a sense of integrity, wholeness and vision of those landmarks that are conscience and the laws of a harmonious society.

Here's what Wikipedia says: "In his will, he (Chesterfield) left them (grandchildren) a small capital, and nothing - to their mother. It was the lack of money that prompted Eugenia Stanhope (the wife of Cestrefield's beloved illegitimate son, to whom the letters were dedicated) to sell letters to publishers that were never intended to be printed. The publication caused shock in English society with its familial "frankness"; the collection of letters became popular reading and was reprinted several times, bringing the widow a fortune.

Chesterfield's letters contain an extensive set of instructions and recommendations in the spirit of J. Locke's pedagogical ideas. The narrowly practical focus of the education program (preparation for a high society and state career) shocked many of Chesterfield's contemporaries, but the Letters were highly praised by Voltaire as an example of epistolary prose of the 18th century and a sincere human document. He wrote to the Marquise du Deffant on August 12, 1774: "This book is very instructive, and perhaps the best thing ever written about education."

Further - quotes from the book by F. Chesterfield "Letters to the Son".
The quote given by Chesterfield in one of his letters to his son: "Pleasing appearance is an eternal letter of recommendation" Lord Bacon.

"The ambition of a fool is limited to the desire to have a good exit, a good house and a good dress - things that anyone with a lot of money can start with the same success, because all this is for sale. The ambition of a smart and decent person is to stand out among others. your good name and be valuable for your knowledge, truthfulness and nobility - qualities that can not be bought anywhere, but can only be acquired by those who have a clear head and a kind heart. "

"Outstanding virtues, such as honor, nobility, education and talents, elevate a person above the majority; people who do not possess these virtues cannot correctly evaluate them in others. But all people value secondary virtues, such as courtesy, friendliness, obligation , delicate handling and the ability to behave, because they feel their beneficial effect - it is easy and pleasant to meet such people in society ... I ask you [appeal to my son] never be ashamed to do this should: you would have every reason be ashamed if you were ignorant, but why should you be ashamed of your politeness? And why don't you speak courteous and pleasant words to people as easily and naturally as you would ask them what time it is? "

"There are such awkwardness of speech, the use of words and expressions that should be avoided in the most careful way, distortion of the language, bad pronunciation, all boring sayings and hackneyed proverbs, evidence that a person is used to being in a low and bad society. In fact, if instead of saying that all people have different tastes and each person has his own, you will resolve with a proverb and say: "Every cattle has its own variety," people will imagine that you have spent your whole life in the company of only maids and lackeys. "

"... caring for the beauty of clothes is a great stupidity; and at the same time, it is no less stupidity not to be able to dress well - as it befits your rank and lifestyle. And this not only does not humiliate human dignity, but, on the contrary, rather confirms it: to be dressed no worse than those around you; in this case, the difference between a sane person and a whip is that a whip flaunts his dress, and a sane man quietly laughs at his clothes and at the same time knows that he should not neglect it ".

"In almost every person from birth, to some extent, all passions are embedded, and at the same time, each person is dominated by some one, to which all the others obey. Look in every person for this passion that dominates all, look into the most intimate corners his heart and observe how the same passion behaves differently in different people. passion touches. Be able to use it in order to influence him, only I ask you, be careful and remember about it always, no matter what assurances this person will seduce you. "

"A person who is not able to seize his attention and direct it to the desired subject, expelling all other thoughts for this time, or who simply does not take the trouble to take care of this, is useless either for business or for pleasure. If somewhere at a ball , at dinner, in a cheerful company, a person would begin to solve a geometric problem in his mind, he would be a very uninteresting interlocutor and would be a pitiful sight in society. the mathematician would have come out unimportant. "

"Every person has been given a reason that guides him and should lead him; and wanting everyone to reason like me is like wanting everyone to be my size and my build."

"You step into the light - beware of people who offer you their friendship. Be very courteous with them, but very distrustful with them; answer them with pleasantries, but not frankness. Do not let your pride and vanity deceive yourself with the thought that people can become your friends at first sight or after a short acquaintance. True friendship matures slowly and flourishes only where people have really proven it to each other. "

“Choice of friends is followed by the choice of society. Make every effort to communicate with those who are higher than you. where you are, so are you. When I talk about people above you ... do not think that I mean their origin - this is least important. I mean their true merits and the opinion of them that has developed in the world ".

"A capable, worthy and well-mannered man will make his way everywhere. Thorough knowledge will introduce him to a better society, and his manners will make him a welcome guest."

"... one cannot live in the world without amiable condescension to human weaknesses and someone else's vanity, which is essentially innocent, although, perhaps, sometimes funny. If a man wants to be considered smarter than he really is, and a woman - to be considered more beautiful, this delusion is beneficial for both of them and harmless for others. And I would rather make these people my friends, indulging them than my enemies, trying (and in vain) to get them out of this delusion. "

“I knew one person who was so careful about his time that he did not want to lose even those short minutes that he had to spend on the administration of his natural needs: in those minutes he managed to reread all the Latin poets one by one. some cheap edition of Horace, tore out two pages from it and took them with him to the outhouse, where he first read them, and then sacrificed them to Cloacin: this saved him a lot of time, and I recommend that you follow his example. "

"A well-mannered person knows how to talk with lower-ranking people without arrogance, and with higher-ranking people - respectfully and naturally. Talking with kings, he will remain completely calm; he knows how to joke with the ladies belonging to the highest nobility - naturally, cheerfully, but at the same time With those who are equal to him in status, regardless of whether he is familiar with them or not, he talks about things that are of interest to everyone and are available to everyone, not allowing himself, however, to be too frivolous, not at all worrying and not doing no awkward movements. And I must say that this kind of ease always makes the most favorable impression. "

Enjoy reading!

Good afternoon, dear son!

Received your letter from the collective farm. In five years, you will get to know rural Ukraine well - you will visit at least five regions. You write that in the village where you work, a former policeman was tried - a criminal who tortured Soviet people twenty years ago, killed and tortured partisans, old people, women and children. You are surprised: how can it be - a person was born in a Soviet country, grew up under socialism, and suddenly he becomes a traitor to the Motherland. After all, life itself educates! you exclaim.

The fact of the matter is that - in this I am firmly convinced - brings up not life by itself, but a person... Life only helps a person. I’ll tell you a story from which you will understand how apostates are born ...

Until recently, a man lived in one of the villages of our region, whose fate is terrible and at the same time instructive. This was at the beginning of the war. A bloody tornado scorched Ukraine with hot breath, a fascist horde crawled from the west, our troops retreated beyond the Dnieper. On a quiet August morning, a column of enemy motorcyclists arrived on the main street of the village where this man lived. People hid in huts. The subdued children looked fearfully out of the windows. And suddenly people saw the incredible: this man came out of the hut - in an embroidered shirt, in boots polished to a shine, with bread and salt on an embroidered towel. Smiling ingratiatingly at the Nazis, he brought them bread and salt and bowed. The little red-haired corporal graciously accepted the bread and salt, patted the traitor on the shoulder, and treated him to a cigarette.

The whole village learned about the shameful hospitality. Fierce hatred boiled in their hearts, fists clenched. Then people began to think: who is he, this man, what led him to the terrible path of betrayal? They remembered the pedigree from their grandfather-great-grandfather, mentally looking over his childhood. How so, after all, he is a twenty-year-old boy, it seems he is also a member of the Komsomol. But wait, what's his name? They knew the surname, the person has a parental surname, but no one knew the name. His mother, the collective farmer Yarina, was well known. And this man was called that from childhood: Yarin's son. They began to think: what led the guy to betrayal? But no one could say anything definite about Yarin's son. The neighbors called him mama's boy. One son of his father and mother, he lived like cheese in butter: he slept until lunchtime, and next to the bed on the table stood a jug of milk, a white roll, sour cream, already carefully prepared by his mother ... People from an early age taught children to work, woke up at dawn, they were sent to the field to work, and Yarina guarded her "gold" (as she called him: my gold, my only beloved), protected from work, from all worries and worries. So life brings you up ...

It all depends on where the person turns this life, which side it touches the human soul. The son studied at school until the sixth grade, then learning became a burden, and the mother decided: let the child not languish for a book, the most important thing is health. Until the age of eighteen, the sonny dangled about idle, already began to go to evening parties, and the girls were drawn ... They recalled that two years before the war, the mother of a beautiful girl came to Yarina, she came with tears; what conversation they had - no one knew exactly, it became known in the village only that the black-eyed beauty stopped going outside, then lay in the hospital for a long time, the girlish beauty disappeared, the lights in black eyes went out. The neighbors found out that Yarina had sent her "little gold" somewhere to a distant farm to her uncle-beekeeper, there were rumors: Yarin's son lives among the expanse of the steppe, eats white rolls with honey, and in the evenings a blue-eyed beauty with light brown comes out to him under a tall poplar oblique.

Once Yarina fell ill, told her son to come, she had to help with the housework. The son arrived, stayed at home for three days, the work seemed hard to him: carry water, chop wood, mow hay ... and went back to the farm. So life brings up you ... After all, Yarina loved her son to self-forgetfulness, and how did he repay her? If life brought up, then the mother's love would also bring up the feeling of love in her son. But in life everything is not so easy. It happens that love turns into a serious misfortune ...

How and when the son appeared in the village of Yarinin in that difficult time - no one could say. In the twilight, old men and women sat under branchy cherries, talking about all this, and the thought haunted him: who was he born into? Three days have passed since the village was occupied by the Nazis, and Yarin's son is already walking down the street with a police bandage on his arm.

Thinking, guessing, but it won't get any easier, '' said 70-year-old grandfather Yukhim. From an empty soul. This person has nothing sacred in his soul. The soul did not expire in pain either for the mother or for the native land. My heart did not shudder from concern for the land of their grandfathers and great-grandfathers. The hands did not leave a root in their native land, they did not create anything for people, they did not irrigate the cornfield with sweat, there are no corns from hard and sweet labor - and a thistle has grown.

These words were passed from mouth to mouth. And Yarin's son became a zealous servant of the Nazis. He helped them send people to Hitler's hard labor, helped to rob the collective farmers. They said that Yarinin's son had the clothes of a murdered partisan ... And the mother of the black-eyed beauty, cursing the fascist lackey, said bluntly: it was he who sent her daughter to hard labor in Germany. Terrible days have come for the mother. She saw that people despise her geek, despise her too. She tried to admonish her son, reminded him of the return of Soviet power and retribution, but the son began to threaten: you know, they say, what happens to those who do not agree with the new order. "You are not my son anymore," said the mother, left the hut, went to her sister.

The terrible days of the occupation ended, and at dawn in November Soviet soldiers brought freedom. Hot battles bypassed the village, before Yarin's son had time to escape with his masters. They tried Yarin's son and sentenced him to seven years in prison. Seven years have passed. The son returned from prison, found his mother dying. I asked Yarina to come to her deathbed all the relatives and the most respected old people in the village. She didn’t only allow her son to come to bed, she said before her death: "People, my dear fellow countrymen! Do not put this heavy stone on my chest. Do not consider this person my son." The son stood in the middle of the hut gloomy and indifferent, it seemed to him that he did not care what his mother said. And then grandfather Yukhim said for everyone: “It will be as you ask, Yarina. We will not put a heavy stone on your chest. we will forget his name. "

Grandfather Yukhim's words turned out to be prophetic: before, few knew the name of the traitor, everyone called him Yarin's son, and now his name has been completely forgotten. They began to call this thirty-year-old man differently. Some said simply: the one, the scoundrel; others - a person without a soul, still others - a person who has nothing sacred behind his soul. He lived in his parents' hut, no one ever went to him, the neighbors forbade their children to come close to the hut of the "man without a name" - such a name was finally given to him by all the peasants. He went to work on a collective farm. People avoided working with him. At one time it was difficult with the personnel of machine operators, he asked to study as a tractor driver, but there was no person who would want to be alone with him, to pass on his knowledge to him. Yarin's son became an outcast. The people's court turned out to be immeasurably worse than a prison.

He wanted to get married, but there was no woman or girl who would dare to join her destiny with him. He tried to leave the village. It was then that the whole power of popular morality was manifested. It became clear that a person who betrayed his Motherland can never count on mercy. Two years have passed since that time. The man without a name was overgrown with hair, like a hundred-year-old grandfather, his gaze became somehow cloudy. They said he was losing his mind. For days he sat in the yard, as if basking in the sun. He said something to himself, dug in the ground, found some roots, ate. Someone, out of pity, brought a piece of bread and a pot of borscht at night, and left it on a large stump from an old pear. The man with no name ate greedily in the morning.

Once I had to visit that village. I was sitting in the office of the chairman of the village council. An old, decrepit man came in - he seemed to be about seventy years old. "This is him, a man without a name," the chairman of the village council said quietly. "He is now thirty-nine years old ... Let's hear what he has to say." “Send me somewhere,” a man without a name began to ask dully, with hidden pain. “I can’t live here any longer. Send me to a nursing home or some kind of shelter. Do not send me to hang myself. I know that I deserve human contempt and curse. I would like to hear a kind word even before my death. They know me here, and I hear only curses. " They took pity on him and sent him to a nursing home. No one knew about his past there. They treated him like an old man who deserved the right to respect. They say he was as happy as a child when he was asked to do something for the team: to dig up a flower bed or sort out potatoes. But somehow, rumors of his past reached the nursing home. The attitude of people towards him immediately changed. No one spoke a word about this man's past, but everyone began to avoid him. Two old men who lived in one room with him asked to go to another; and he was left alone. On a cold December night, he went to no one knows where, and since then no one has seen him.

I would like the terrible fate of a man without a name to make young people look at themselves as if from the outside, make them look into their souls and ask themselves: what is dear to me in our Soviet life? Where are the threads with which I am connected with the people? How have I already earned and how will I earn the respect of the people in the future? Ask yourself these questions. Think about the fact that a person himself pushes himself into the abyss of loneliness, if in his soul there is no that sacred fire, without which happiness is impossible - the fire of love for people.

Why did an honest, hardworking woman have a traitorous son? Wasn't his childhood joyful and carefree? It seemed that the mother measured happiness to her son in full measure. But what kind of happiness was it and by what measure was it measured? The animal joy of consumption became happiness for the child, egoistic pleasures overshadowed the world around him. Fenced off by a blank wall of these pleasures from the joys and hardships of the people, the young heart became callous, soulless. It is impossible to educate a sensitive and honest soul of a citizen if the only joy is the joy of consumption, if a person comes to a person only when he receives something.... The core, the core of the human personality, is that sacred thing that should be behind the soul, should become more precious than life - the honor, dignity, pride of a Soviet citizen. Love for the Motherland and love for people are two fast streams that merge to form a mighty river of patriotism.

Do not forget that a moment will come in your life when civic courage, perseverance, readiness for such an exertion of all physical and spiritual forces will be required of you, when on one side there are joys, blessings, pleasure, and on the other - huge hardships, self-sacrifice, even death for the sake of life and happiness of people. Prepare yourself to cross the line on this second path at the right time. You know that a portrait of an eighteen-year-old boy Leonid Shevchenko hangs in a place of honor at our school. He went to Kazakhstan as a volunteer in the first year of the development of virgin lands, worked as a tractor driver, died at a combat post, defending socialist property. Under the portrait of the young man, the words of Indian wisdom: "Human life is like iron: if you use it in business, it is erased, if you do not use it, rust eats it up." Let your heart burn with a bright flame, let it illuminate the road for both you and the children - this is the happiness of life. But if rust eats up your heart, remember, you are doomed to miserable vegetation.

Leonid Shevchenko preferred combustion to decay. On a frosty February day in 1956, he and his comrades drove a tractor for hay - fifty kilometers from the estate of the virgin state farm. On the way back, a storm broke out. It was possible to leave the tractor, go to the dugout to the livestock breeders, whose village was not far from the road. But Leonid did not leave the car. “Go,” he said to his comrades, “wait out the storm, and I’ll stay, I’ll warm up the engine, because if you stop the car, then you won’t start for a day, but we’re carrying hay, animals without food ...” The storm turned into a terrible hurricane, the frost intensified , it was already impossible to approach the tractor caravan. A day later, the comrades found the young man in the cockpit, he froze, a numb hand gripped the steering wheel.

A man without a name and an 18-year-old boy, whose name has been proudly pronounced by more than one generation of schoolchildren, were born on the same land, in neighboring villages. Why is their fate so different? Because one lived, as they say, in his own belly, while the other loved his homeland and people. Because the mother of a man without a name protected her son from the worries and worries of the world, fed him with joys, and this became the highest joy for her, and Leonid's mother taught her son: you live among people, remember that your highest joy is the joy that you brought to people... I remember Leonid's childhood and adolescence. The boy was ordinary, like thousands of others: he played naughty at recess, fought with his comrades, fired a slingshot. But this is not what determines the spiritual core of a person. The most important thing is that in childhood a person experienced the highest joy - the joy of doing good for people. A tractor brigade is located near the house of Leonid's family. Tractor drivers hid from the weather in a wooden trailer, and all around was a field, on hot days there was nowhere to hide from the heat. The mother said to the children: we will plant a walnut tree for people. Seven-year-old Leonid also worked. The tractor drivers thanked, the children rejoiced ... Now fourteen years have passed since that time. The walnut tree has grown, people rest under its shade on hot days.

I look into your eyes, my son, I think: what have you done for people? Where is the thread that connects you with the working people? Where is the root that nourishes your spiritual nobility from the source of eternal and enduring beauty - the conquests of the revolution? What has brought you the greatest joy in your life? During the May Day holidays, you and your comrade got behind the wheel of a tractor, worked for two days in the field so that labor veterans could have a rest. You came home from work tired, your face was covered with dust, but joyful, happy, because you did good to people, and in this you found your joy. You took out twenty tons of fertilizer into the field, and the barren wasteland, where even weeds did not grow, turned into a fat cornfield. The lights of human pride lit up in your eyes when you looked at the field. But whether this light will last a lifetime is what worries me. The brighter the beauty of millions of roses in our national flower garden, the more striking is the thistle or dope bush that comes from nowhere and poisons our life. Datura and thistle can be plucked, removed from the flower garden, but a person cannot be thrown out of society. Care must be taken so that dope does not appear, so that every seed placed in fertile soil gives a beautiful flower.

A year ago, the workers of one of the collective farms in our area were outraged by the unheard-of news: the foreman of the field-crop brigade ordered the driver to dump several tons of mineral fertilizers into the ravine so that there would be less worries. Both of them - the brigadier and the driver - are young people, already in the post-war years they stood side by side in the ranks of the pioneer detachment, accepting the solemn promise to be loyal to the lofty ideals of communism; together they entered the Komsomol. These two thistle bushes on our beautiful land are a phenomenon of the same order as a man without a name, as a murderer who has lost his human appearance, as a young twenty-seven-year-old father who abandoned three families, each with a child. The degree of the crime is different here, but the root of evil is the same moral deformity, the name of which is the emptiness of the soul.

There is a proverb: "Whom you lead, from that you will get enough", it is fair, but it often happens that no one teaches a person anything bad, no reprehensible actions do not happen before his eyes, and he grows up a scoundrel. The thing is that, as it turns out, no one teaches this person good or bad, and he grows like weeds in a vacant lot. This is how the most terrible thing that can be imagined in our days is born - the emptiness of the soul. A man without a name was not taught to betray the Motherland and be a tormentor, but he became so because, as grandfather Yukhim said well, his soul did not expire in pain either for his mother or for his native land, did not leave his hands root in his native land, did not grow to this root a drop of sweat and a grain of human honor. If a person is not taught either good or bad, he will not become a Human; in order for a living being born of a person to become a Person, it is necessary to teach him only good things.

I wish you good health and good spirits. I hug and kiss you tightly. Your father.

V.A. Sukhomlinsky. Letters to my son

Sukhomlinsky about friendship (from letters to his son)

In these two letters to his son, Sukhomlinsky most deeply reveals the essence of friendship, helps his son understand the intricacies of friendship between a man and a woman.

Letter 11

Good afternoon, dear son!

I am very glad that the self-education letter has aroused such great interest in you. You very subtly noticed one feature of a modern young man (and not only a young one) - a great, sometimes painful nervous excitability. I am sure that many conflicts, often quarrels between people occur because people do not know how to control their feelings and, even worse, do not engage in self-education of feelings at all.

And to bring up the emotional sphere in oneself is a very serious question in our time, especially for young people. For millennia, human life was mainly determined by muscle strength and such gross properties of the nervous system as stubbornness and cruelty.

The most important thing is that every young person must remember not to make up for the wretchedness of thought with coarse feelings, expressed in shouting, bitterness, ferocity. Somewhere in the depths of the human psyche, instincts are dormant in the subconscious - animal fear, ferocity, cruelty. The less culture a person has, the poorer his mental, aesthetic interests, the more often instincts wake up and make themselves felt by rudeness. When a person has nothing more to say to prove his innocence, he either directly says that he can no longer prove anything (this is what people of high emotional and intellectual culture do), or starts screaming, that is, he makes up for the wretchedness of thought with a "riot of instincts."

We must spare the nervous, emotional sphere - in ourselves and in other people. Remember that the source of the subtlety of feelings that a person needs now is like air - in the subtlety of thoughts, in the wealth of the intellect.

Feeling ennobles thought, but a truly human feeling ke can exist without thought - from thought it is born, thought feeds it, through thought it lives. Thanks to the wealth of thought, it, the human feeling, becomes an independent force in the spiritual world of a person - it is capable of prompting a person to noble deeds. How to cultivate the refinement of feelings?

First of all, never forget that you live among people. Never forget that a person is working next to you who has his own worries, worries, thoughts, experiences. To be able to respect the human in everyone who lives and works next to you is perhaps the greatest human skill. The subtlety of feelings is brought up only in a team, only through constant spiritual communication with people around you. On what to hone, "polish" feelings, if not on intimate friendship, rich in intellectual, aesthetic interests? Cultivate your feelings in friendship. Friendship will help you develop a subtle sensitivity to the human in everyone around you.

But what is necessary for true friendship, spiritually enriching a person, helping him suppress the instinctive in himself and develop the human?

Your personal spiritual wealth is needed. You will be enriched spiritually only when you give something to your friend. Of course, a few months after the creation of a new team, it is difficult to demand that you already have a friend. But still the time must come when you will have it. A friend with whom you will share your thoughts, feelings, joys and sorrows. If I had the opportunity to come to you now, I would come, gather your roommates, invite other students and tell them: "My young friends, spare your heart and bring up feelings. Remember that nowadays a person becomes with every year more and more sensitive to influences from the outside world.

The idea of ​​"man to man is a friend, comrade and brother" contains a deep meaning. But this depth is not always understood. To be a friend means, first of all, to educate a person, to assert the human in him. "Education, in essence, consists in suppressing animal instincts and developing everything human. The pinnacle of humanity is communist education. Brutal instincts are the absence of pity for all living things and beautiful, absolute indifference to the spiritual world of another person - lie at the heart of the psyche of any murderer, rapist. It is necessary to educate, cultivate in oneself pity for all living things and beauty. You will have children, remember: from how a small child treats birds, flowers, trees, depends on his morality, his attitude to people. I am sending you a book - "Selected" A. Saint-Exupery. I would like you to carefully read the fairy tale "The Little Prince" and think about it. I wish you good health and good spirits I hug and kiss you Your father.

Letter 16

Good afternoon, dear son!

It is clear from your letter that my teachings became, as it were, a spark for the discussion that flared up in your hostel. Well, well, that's not bad. It is good that young people are not indifferent to all this. You write that some of your comrades do not believe in friendship, just friendship between a boy and a girl: since a boy and a girl, there must be love. I will say what I think about this.

Friendship is a school for educating human feelings. We need friendship not in order to fill the time with something, but in order to assert good in a person and, above all, in ourselves. I believe that one of the most important rules of moral education is that in the years of adolescence and early adolescence, each person experiences a deep sense of admiration for the spiritual nobility of a good person, falls in love with him. Faith in man, in the beauty of humanity, essentially depends on this.

If this is not the case, a person's soul is empty, the slightest troubles in life can cause him petty grumbling, disbelief in his strength. The emptiness of the soul, the fact that a person has no faith in anything is the most terrible vice - I once wrote to you about this, I repeat it again. An empty soul greedily absorbs the bad and it is difficult to succumb to the influence of the good, because emptiness, spiritual wretchedness are already vices in themselves. He who has an empty soul cannot be a true friend, he does not feel humanity in friendship.

Life convinced me that if in the years of adolescence and early youth a person is inspired by a moral ideal, if a person understands what a right person is, then friendship spiritually enriches him, in friendship he looks not for spending time, but for a field for self-affirmation and self-education. This noble spiritual need is especially necessary - the need for a man for the formation of a man. In order to become a real man, in these years of your early youth you must reveal the wealth of your soul in friendship. The purity of your feelings of love, the happiness of your future family depends on this.

Love without friendship is shallow. If a young man respects a man first of all in a girl, then this sublime, noble friendship in itself is as beautiful as love. People who hope to build a spiritual community on love as a sexual attraction do not value love, because they strive to squeeze the whole world of spiritual life into kisses and jealousy. Love without a higher spiritual life - without striving for a single ideal, without friendship in the name of this - can turn into sensual pleasure.

Write down the words of V. G. Belinsky in your notebook, read them in private, ponder them, check yourself: "Love is poetry and the sun of life. in the life of the heart, he hopes to find complete satisfaction with all his aspirations ... "" If the whole goal of our life consisted only in our personal happiness, and our personal happiness would consist only in love: then life would be really a gloomy desert littered with coffins and broken hearts, it would be hell, before the terrible essence of which the poetic images of earthly hell, inscribed by the genius of the stern Dante, would pale "

Think about it: life would be hell if happiness was only in love. If it was impossible to limit oneself to personal happiness in Belinsky's time, then to do so in our time is the same as condemning oneself to loneliness and inactivity, narrowing one's world to subjective feelings and experiences.

If already in his time Belinsky saw that, "apart from the inner world of the heart," there is a "great world of life," that great world where "thought becomes a deed, and lofty feeling becomes a feat," 19 then in our time such a world has not opened for individual fighters, but for the whole people. Sexual attraction only then began to acquire the character of a moral bond between people, a moral duty, when, in addition to external beauty, a person's inner wealth was revealed to a person - the dignity of the individual, her abilities, creativity, social activity.

Sexual happiness is an animal passion that makes a person blind and reckless. In order for love to become a heroic deed for a person, he must reach a high level of moral development: first of all, determine the high goal of his life, be inspired by the thought of overcoming difficulties on the way to achieving the goal. When the struggle to achieve a high goal becomes a true passion, then love, sexual passion loses the character of a goal, a loved one becomes a friend in this struggle.

The passion of love ceases to be a goal and ennobles a person, raises him above sensual passions. Understanding the true scale of personal happiness and universal human happiness does not in the least humiliate a person, does not oppress him, but, on the contrary, elevates him, since it awakens in him the desire to enrich his whole life with high spiritual interests.

Understanding the proportionality of personal feelings and the happiness of mankind prevents individual troubles, petty disputes from turning into a tragedy and poisoning life. How many such "tragedies" worthy of regret, humiliating human dignity, can be observed in life. How many "hopeless situations" and "insoluble contradictions" are created in young families only because people make a small universe out of their love, in which, of course, there are dead ends at every step, there is no room for broad, noble movements of the soul.

Remember this, let "this be a commandment for your future family life: where the spiritual life of a young husband and wife begins and ends with love, at the slightest pretext, ambition is played out; offended spouses do not talk to each other for weeks because of trifles, stirring up their hearts with petty things. scratches and deliberately sprinkle them with the salt of petty anger.At the same time, all these "tragedies" are elevated into a problem, people are trying to find some differences of opinion, dissimilarity in character, etc.

Such people are essentially not ready for spiritual and psychological communication, they should not marry until they determine the extent of their personal happiness. A few weeks ago, our district attorney told me about a divorce case. The young people lived for two weeks, and now the happiness of the "honeymoon" was overshadowed by a quarrel.

The reason for the quarrel was ridiculous: the spouses could not unanimously decide where to put the TV ... The quarrel flared up, both came to the conclusion that their characters were so different that family life would be impossible. At the trial, a wise woman, a people's assessor, began, as they say, to follow a thread to the ball; the couple hardly remembered how the quarrel had begun, and they felt ashamed. This is what a person can reach if the little things are hypertrophied, turn into "world problems", if there is no lofty goal in front of the mind's eye. The most important and most difficult thing for a person is always, in all circumstances, to remain a person. Always be human. I wish you good health and good spirits. I hug and kiss you. Your father.

V.A. Sukhomlinsky. Letters to my son

In A Sukhomlinsky
Letters to my son

Sukhomlinsky, VA
Letters to my son

V. A. Sukhomlinsky
LETTERS TO SON
The book includes the well-known works of V. A. Sukhomlinsky "I give my heart to children", "The birth of a citizen", as well as "Letters to my son". The named works are thematically related to each other and constitute a kind of trilogy, in which the author raises the topical problems of raising a child, adolescent, young man.
It is intended for teachers, educators of general education schools, public education workers, students and teachers of pedagogical universities.
1. Good afternoon, dear son!
So you flew away from your parental nest - you live in a big city, study at a university, you want to feel like an independent person. I know from my own experience that, caught up in the stormy whirlwind of a new life for you, you remember little about your parental home, about my mother and me, and you almost never miss. It will come later when you know life. ... The first letter to the son who flew away from the parental nest ... You want it to remain with you for the rest of your life, so that you keep it, re-read it, think about it. My mother and I know that each young generation is a little condescending to the teachings of parents: you, they say, cannot see and understand everything that we see and understand. Maybe this is so ... Maybe, after reading this letter, you want to put it somewhere further away, so that it reminds less of the endless teachings of your father and mother. Well, put it down, but just remember well where, because the day will come when you will remember these teachings, you will say to yourself: nevertheless, your father was right ... and you will have to read this old, half-forgotten letter. You will find and read it. Preserve it for the rest of your life. I also kept the first letter from my father. I was 15 years old when I flew away from my parental nest - I entered to study at the Kremenchug Pedagogical Institute. It was a difficult year 1934. I remember my mother seeing me off to the entrance exams. In an old clean handkerchief I tied a new one, which was stored in a row at the bottom of the chest, and a bundle with food: tortillas, two glasses of fried soy ... I passed my exams well. There were few applicants with a secondary education at that time, and the institute was allowed to accept seven-year graduates. My teaching began. It was difficult, very difficult to acquire knowledge when the stomach was empty. But now the bread of the new harvest appeared. I will never forget the day when my mother handed me the first loaf, baked from new rye. The transfer was brought by grandfather Matvey, a cabman of a rural consumer society, who came to the city every week to buy goods. The loaf was in a clean linen sack - soft, fragrant, with a crispy crust. And next to the loaf, my father's letter is the first letter I’m talking about: it is kept with me as the first commandment ... “Do not forget, son, about our daily bread. I don’t believe in God, but I call bread holy. for you he will remain holy for life. Remember who you are and where you came from. Remember how difficult it is to get this bread. Remember that your grandfather, my father Omelko Sukhomlin was a serf and died at the plow in the field. Never forget about the folk root. ... Do not forget that while you are studying, someone is working to get your daily bread. And you will learn, become a teacher - also do not forget about bread. Bread is human labor, it is both a hope for the future, and a yardstick that will always measure the conscience of yours and your children. ”This is what my father wrote in his first letter. Well, there was also a postscript that they received rye and wheat for workdays that every week my grandfather Matthew will bring me a loaf. Why am I writing to you about this, son? Do not forget that our root is the working people, the earth, the holy bread. in one act he will express disdain for bread and labor, for the people who gave us all life ... Hundreds of thousands of words in our language, but in the first place I would put three words: bread, labor, people. These are the three roots on which our state. This is the very essence of our system. And these roots are so firmly intertwined that it is impossible to break them or divide them. Who does not know what bread and labor are, ceases to be the son of his people. He loses the best spiritual qualities of the people, becomes a renegade. , a faceless creature unworthy of respect I am. He who forgets what work, sweat and fatigue are, ceases to value bread. Whichever of these three powerful roots is damaged in a person, he ceases to be a real person, he has rot inside him, a wormhole. I am proud that you know the work in the grain-growing field, you know how difficult it is to get bread. Do you remember how on the eve of the May Day holiday I came to your class (it seems you were in your ninth class then) and conveyed the request of the collective farm machine operators: please replace us in the field on holidays, we want to rest. Do you remember how all of you young men did not want to wear overalls instead of a festive costume, get behind the wheel of a tractor, or be a hauler? But what pride shone in your eyes when those two days passed, when you returned home feeling like workers. I do not believe in such a, I would say, a chocolate notion of communism: there will be plenty of all material benefits, a person will be provided for everything, everything will be with him as if by a wave of his hand, and everything will be so easy for him to get: he wanted - here's to you on the table, whatever your heart desires. If all this were so, then the person would turn into the devil knows what, probably, into a satiated animal. Fortunately, this will not happen. Nothing will reach a person without stress, without effort, without sweat and fatigue, without anxiety and excitement. Under communism there will be corns, and there will be sleepless nights. And the most important thing on which a person will always keep - his mind, conscience, human pride - is that he will always get bread in the sweat of his brow. There will always be anxiety at the plowed field, there will be a heartfelt concern, as for a living creature, for a tender stalk of wheat. There will be an irresistible desire for the earth to give more and more - this will always hold the root of man's bread. And this root must be protected in everyone. You write that soon you will be sent to work on a collective farm. And very good. I'm very, very happy about that. Work well, do not let yourself, your father, or your comrades down. Don't pick something cleaner or lighter. Choose work directly in the field, on the ground. The shovel is also a tool that can be used to show skill. And during the summer holidays you will work in a tractor brigade at your collective farm (of course, if they do not recruit those who wish to the virgin lands. If they do, go there). "By the ear of wheat they recognize the person who raised it" - you probably know this Ukrainian proverb well. Each person is proud of what he does for people. Every honest person wants to leave a particle of himself in his ear of wheat. I have lived in the world for almost fifty years, and I am convinced that this desire is most vividly expressed in the one who works on the earth. We will wait for your first student holidays - I will introduce you to an old man from a neighboring collective farm, he has been growing apple seedlings for more than thirty years. This is a real artist in his field. In every twig, in every leaf of a grown tree, he sees himself. If today all people were like that, one could say that we have achieved communist labor ... I wish you health, goodness, happiness. Mom and sister hug you. They wrote to you yesterday. I kiss you. Your father.
2. Good afternoon, dear son!
I received your letter from the collective farm. It made me very excited. Didn't sleep all night. I thought about what you write and about you. On the one hand, it's good that you are worried about the facts of mismanagement: there is a beautiful orchard on the collective farm, but already ten tons of apples have been fed to pigs; Three hectares of tomatoes remained unharvested, I the chairman of the collective farm ordered the tractor drivers to plow the land so that there would be no traces left ... But, on the other hand, I am surprised that in your letter there is only bewilderment and nothing more, confusion in front of these outrageous facts. So what does it do? You write: "When I saw this area plowed in the morning, my heart almost burst out of my chest ..." And then what? After all, what happened to your heart? Has it calmed down, apparently, and beats evenly? And the hearts of your comrades, too, have not escaped from anyone's chest?
Bad, very bad ... You probably remember my stories about Talleyrand, this super-cynic and arrogant politician. He taught young people to be afraid of the first movement of the soul, because it is usually the noblest. And we, communists, teach something else: do not let the first movements of the soul go out in yourself, because they are the noblest. Do as the first movement of the soul suggests. To suppress the voice of conscience in oneself is a very dangerous business. If you get used to not paying attention to one thing, you will soon not pay attention to anything. Don't compromise your conscience, this is the only way to forge character. Write down these words from Dead Souls in your notebook: “Take with you on the way, leaving your mild youthful years into a harsh, hardening courage, take with you all human movements, do not leave them on the road, do not pick them up later! The most terrible thing for a person is to turn into a sleeping person with open eyes: look and not see, see and not think about what you see, listen to good and evil indifferently; pass quietly past evil and untruth. Beware of this, son, more death, more than any of the most terrible danger. A person without convictions is a rag, nothing. Since you are convinced that evil is happening in your eyes, let your heart scream about it, fight against evil, achieve the triumph of truth. You ask me: why I specifically could have done to prevent evil? How to fight against evil? I don’t know and will not prescribe recipes. If I were where you work, if I saw what you saw with a friend, I would find that I do. You write with surprise that to Everyone on the collective farm is accustomed to such facts and does not pay attention to them. So much the worse for you and your comrade. Never be afraid to express how you feel. even if your thoughts contradict the generally accepted 2. These words of Rodin, too, would not hurt you hack to death. In my place, I would immediately go with a comrade to the party organization, I would say: what is this being done? If you yourself cannot remove the tomatoes, we, the students, will remove them, but human labor should not be allowed to perish. Nothing would have happened in the party organization - would have reached the district committee, would have raised the group of people's control to its feet - I do not believe that everyone is indifferent to evil, everyone has got used to shortcomings ... This cannot be. Now you are ascending to that step of spiritual development when a person no longer has to look back at others: what are they doing? How do they do it? You have to think for yourself, decide for yourself. I kiss you. Your father.
3. Good afternoon, dear son!
I am very much aware that you write frankly about everything, share your thoughts, doubts and worries. And one more thing gives me joy: the fact that in the days of this difficult, intense work,
when you have to go to bed at twelve and get up at five, these are the thoughts that excite you. You write that if you raised your voice against the evil that is happening before your eyes, if you began to fight for the truth, they would look at you with surprise - like a black sheep. In this letter, I read between the lines a feeling of despondency, some kind of confusion. “I feel that ideologicalism is regarded here as a desire to accumulate a certain moral capital,” you write. “I have heard more than once how the word ideological is pronounced with irony: what a very ideological you are ... What is it? I used to think with reverence, at the thought of which my heart beat faster, they lose their meaning? How to understand life in the name of an idea? " Well, my son, it is very good that these questions concern you. I am very happy for you and for myself. This means that you are not indifferent to what the people around you say and what they think. Ideology, idea - great, holy words. And the one who, voluntarily or involuntarily, tries to vulgarize the beauty of human ideology, to pollute the pure and majestic with a web of petty-bourgeois self-righteousness and indifference, philistine scoffing, he raises his hand, swings at the Man. Ideology is true humanity. Do you remember the words of Goethe: "Anyone who moves away from ideas, in the end remains with only sensations" 3? I remember how in the years of adolescence you were amazed, amazed by these words, and you asked me: "So, in other words, is turning into an animal?" Yes, my son, who has no idea in his heart, is beginning to approach animal existence. Remember, I tell you again, remember that in the name of an idea people went into the fire, to the scaffold, under bullets. Giordano Bruno could have saved his life with just a few words: I give up my views. But he did not say these words, because a noble idea inspired him. To the shouts and laughter of a crowd of thousands of ignorant inhabitants, in a buffoon's cap and a robe on which devils were painted, he walked to starry sky rockets heading to distant worlds. It was enough for Alexander Ulyanov to write a loyal letter "to the highest name", and the tsar would have given him life, but he did not, could not do it. It was enough for Sofya Perovskaya to say that she did not take part in the preparation of the assassination of the tsar, and she would have been released, there was no direct evidence of her guilt - but she could not do this, because the idea of ​​freedom, the idea of ​​destroying the tyrant was dearer to her than her own life. ... The idea makes a person courageous and fearless. If every young man, every girl in our country lived with a noble, lofty idea, if every idea was a guardian of conscience, our society would become a world of ideal moral, spiritual beauty. People would shine. as Gorky dreamed, like a star to each other 4. But this time will not come nearer by itself. You have to fight for it. The most difficult thing that we have to do - both me and you and your children - is to spiritualize a person with an elevated communist idea. She, this idea, is the most beautiful thing in the world, my son. I have read and am sending you a little book - "Heart handed over to the storms" - speeches delivered at the trial by the communist Khosrov Ruzbekh, the leader of the Iranian Communist Party. His life is very instructive in general, and for young people striving to learn the meaning and beauty of the communist idea, this life is, figuratively speaking, a primer of ideology. Khosrov Ruzbekh is a talented scientist-mathematician, he wrote many scientific works, a brilliant future was opening before him. But he was inspired by the struggle for the liberation of the Motherland from tyranny and oppression. He became a communist. He was underground for several years. The traitor betrayed him, Khosrov Ruzbekh was arrested and tried. He was threatened with the death penalty. The court would give him life if Khosrov Ruzbeh asked for mercy. But the communist knew: in the cruel atmosphere of terror reigning in the country, his comrades would perceive his salvation from death as a betrayal and stigmatize him. Here is his last word: “Death is always unpleasant, especially for people whose hearts are full of hope for the future, the future is bright and beautiful. But staying alive by hook or by crook is unworthy for real people. On the path of life, you should never lose your main goal. If life is bought at the cost of shame and shame, loss of honor, rejection of my ideas, my cherished dreams and political and social views, death is a hundred times more honest and honorable. a criminal to be punished and deserving the death penalty, but given that my honor is in danger, I formally demand the death sentence from the respectable judges in order to share the glory of my lost friends and to eliminate the accusation that threatens my honor. Neither I nor my comrades who were convicted of political activity are criminals, on the contrary, we are servants of our dear motherland, and the just and honest Iranian people regard these sentences as arbitrary and will acquit their selfless sons. Condemn Khosrov Ruzbekh, but you will not condemn humanity, honesty, patriotism, humanity and selflessness. " meaning, but ideological courage is considered almost careerism. These people are pitiful for their wretchedness, emptiness of spiritual life. They do not know the fullness of a highly ideological spiritual life, which means they do not know true happiness in general. They think that to be inspired by an idea means to be a slave to an idea In their opinion (this opinion did not arise today, it has long been migrating from one historical period to another), a person dissolves in an idea, ceases to exist as a person, turns into a walking idea. himself in creativity, becomes a true fighter for something. with an idea. We have a good teacher in our region, my friend Ivan Guryevich Tkachenko, director of the Bogdanovsk secondary school (maybe you remember him, he came to us several times). During the Great Patriotic War, he fought against the Nazis in a partisan detachment - in the Black Forest, not far from Znamenka. He recently told me an amazing story that you need to know about in connection with doubts about the idea and the ideal. It was during the difficult months of the war, in the late autumn of 1941. Fascist propaganda shouted that the Red Army was finished, Moscow would soon fall. But the Nazis were already frightened by the first news of the partisans. Partisans also haunted the Germans in our region. In one of the villages located near the Black Forest, the people's avengers burned down a staff car, a radio station and killed three Nazis. The Nazis have decided not yet to take punitive measures against the inhabitants of this village. They decided to take a different, more subtle path of "mental shock", as their propagandists said. In the center of the village, they erected a large gallows, nailed to it a sign with the inscription in German and Ukrainian: "If at least one partisan appears in the village, if even a drop of the blood of a German soldier is spilled from the hand of a partisan, if even one word is uttered in justification or support bandit actions of partisans, - the first ten residents will be hanged on this gallows. " They drove the whole village to the gallows, in order to "explain" this order, a fascist major arrived and said to the peasants: "Your Red Army is gone, the Soviet Union is gone, all Soviet lands now belong to the German Reich." The peasants were discouraged. And then a guy of about twenty came out of the crowd to the Major. "Do not believe the fascists," he shouted. "The Red Army is alive, Soviet power is alive, Moscow is and will always be. I am a partisan intelligence officer." The fascists were so amazed at the insolence of the hero that in the first moments they were confused. The guy managed to say his angry words, managed to take a pistol out of the sleeve of his sweatshirt and shoot the major at point-blank range. The Nazis realized themselves only when the major lay dead. They grabbed a guy in a sweatshirt and tied him up. Sentenced to death. Before the execution, the guy was sitting in a prison cell with one partisan who managed to escape, thanks to him, something became known about the hero. “I’m not a partisan,” the guy said, “I am a Soviet soldier captured by the Nazis. when the major said about the death of our army, about the fall of Moscow.
My soul could not stand it. I knew that I was going to die, but I could not do otherwise. My words kindled in the hearts of people a flame of faith in the victory of our Motherland. They will hang me there, in the village, on the same gallows. All the peasants will be gathered again. Death will be the hardest test for me. It's scary to die after all. It is scary to imagine that in a minute you will disappear into oblivion. I would like to withstand this test in front of people. I am supported by the belief in victory. This is how I live. "He passed the test with honor. Before the executioner threw a noose around his neck, he exclaimed:" Do not bow your heads before the executioners, people. Freedom does not hang on the gallows. I am dying for the Motherland. "Anyone who cherishes an idea cherishes his own dignity. The communist idea, in the words of Marx, turns into bonds from which you cannot break out without tearing your heart.6 I believe that you will become a real person, that the great truth of our ideas and your heart will merge together. Remember that not everything in life will be smooth and beautiful. You will also meet ugly, ugly things. You must be able to oppose them with the great truth of communism. Ideology without human passion turns into hypocrisy. We have many "fighters in our society. for the truth "," seekers of truth "who are not averse to" expose "evil, but let the militia fight against it. These demagogues, windbags bring a lot of harm. Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov said very well: we must not fight for cleanliness, but sweep. We still have something to sweep. that the rubbish that from time to time you can meet on your life path will not cause you either despondency, or confusion, or disbelief in goodness. Good will triumph, but the sources of the triumph of good are in man, in ourselves. I wish you good health, good spirits and joy. I hug and kiss you. Your father.
4. Good afternoon, dear son!
How glad I am that you care about all this: the ideal, the purpose of life, truth, beauty. For a long time I don’t remember you having such a "flash" of interest in these problems. Glad that my letter awakened a whole stream of thoughts in you. Probably, the reason for such a rise is that there are new people in front of you now, every day you get to know the most wonderful, most amazing thing in the world - a Human. And cognition of a person is a repeated cognition of oneself. At home, I notice such a spiritual uplift on those happy days when I come to a class where all the students are completely new people to me. Knowing them, I kind of "shake up" myself, "check" my views, beliefs, strive to see good and bad in myself.
You write: "It is unlikely that now, in our time, one can meet a person about whom one could say: he is ideal." Between the lines, I read here a question, imbued with bewilderment: "Are there any ideal people in our days, is it possible at all to have a man without flaws?" and the peremptory youthful statement: "The time of ideal people has passed ... The time of the heroic has passed ..." said: "It's time, in an hour the train"). You ardently defended your opinion: the soil for the birth of ideal people was at a time when all social forces were distributed along opposite poles: on the one hand, good, on the other, evil. It was clear for what and against what to fight, where there is evil and where is good. But now it’s not that: the struggle for the ideal merges with everyday work. You gave an example: the milkmaid milked a thousand liters more than planned, and they are already talking about her as a heroine. Can the heroic be achieved so easily? Isn't ordinary work too often rewarded - work as a duty, as a condition of existence - with the great word feat? Your letter develops these thoughts of yours. These are very complex and subtle questions. Especially the question of the ideal. First of all, we must remember that ideal does not mean without a hitch, without a hitch. Man is always made of flesh and blood, not reinforced concrete. I think you will not deny Pavka Korchagin the right to be called ideal, but do you remember what he said about himself? Here are his words: "But there were many mistakes made out of foolishness, in youth, and most of all out of ignorance." The most important thing is that "on the crimson banner of the revolution there are also a few drops of his blood." Here it is - perfect. It is measured by human passion, by the intensity of his struggle for the triumph of truth, for the victory of the revolution. I will forever remember the words of Ernest Hemingway: "Man was not created to endure defeat ... Man can be destroyed, but he cannot be defeated." 8. But long before Ernest Hemingway said these words, the world heard them from the lips of Pavel Korchagin ... And I not only heard the words - I saw the feat. Imagine that people who have long passed away, for whom a just social system was a distant future, a wonderful, captivating dream, would look at our life, at our everyday work ... Such as Alexander Ulyanov, Stepan Khalturin, Sofya Perovskaya. .. Imagine that they would see our life, take a closer look at it, understand the work of millions of builders of the new world - what would their heart tell them, what would they feel and think? Their hearts would flutter with amazement. Our time itself, our whole life, they would see as ideal. Any of these heroes would say: this is the life for which I went to die.
The trouble is that we do not feel it, we forget what time we live in. The heroic is in ourselves, in the millions of "ordinary" workers who do not even dream of being heroes and would be very surprised if they were told that they are heroes. The concepts themselves are changing: it seems to me that in the words of an ordinary person, an ordinary worker, there is a certain shade of disdain for a person. There is no common man. Our contemporary is a toiler working in the field, on the farm, at the machine-oh, he is far from simple. The crimson banner of the revolution ... Our people proudly carry it over the world. The revolution continues, the revolution is now approaching the summit of the transformation of the world - this is the meaning of our time, my dear son, and you must understand and feel it. What the best people of the past dreamed about, for which they went to torment and death, we are now doing with our own hands. We are building communism - you can understand and feel this only when each of us sees our everyday life through the eyes of those for whom the communist ideal, the ideal of goodness and truth was a captivating dream of happiness - a dream realizable, but distant ... And that milkmaid, the one you spoke of is a truly ideal person, a hero. She does not perform any feat, but her whole life is a feat. Her drop of blood is on the crimson banner of the revolution. Why is she a heroine, why is her life a feat? Yes, because she raises a person with her labor. Think, son, over the goal of communist construction: for the sake of what are we working, outline and fulfill our five-year and seven-year plans? All for the sake of human happiness. Communism is not something divinely incomprehensible, towering over the faceless mass of people. Communism is in man himself, in his happiness. Building communism means creating happiness for every person, every family, and this is impossible, simply unthinkable without material and spiritual benefits. The milkmaid who creates material values ​​is concerned not only with material well-being. If it were not for the work of this “simple,” “ordinary,” milkmaid, there would be no beautiful songs by Pakhmutova, no symphonies by Shostakovich, no daring dream of academician Ambartsumyan about the birth of supernovae ... There would be no university where you study, not that quiet evening hour, when thousands and thousands of residents of the capital bend over an interesting book, go to the concert hall and the theater. She, the milkmaid, understands that she is the creator of life. This is the essence of the ideal in a "simple", so-called "ordinary" person. This is the root of labor creativity. There would not have been our crimson banner of revolution over the world if not for thousands and thousands of milkmaids and plowmen, miners and metallurgists. An ideal person is not an icon, not a sinless being covered with a "textbook gloss". The ideal is in our very lives. Look more attentively around you, look at people, try to see not what is on the surface, but deep, inner - and you will see the ideal.
Life would be continuous vegetation if his guiding star - the ideal - did not shine in front of a person. I wish you, my son, good health and good spirits. I kiss you hard. Your father.
5. Good afternoon, dear son!
Received your letter. Finally, your classes began. You write with delight about the rich classrooms in radio physics and electronics. I am glad that you are confirmed in your calling. If you are sure, and life confirms that radiophysics is your favorite business, then you will be a happy person. But a vocation is not something that comes to a person from the outside. If in high school, starting, probably, from the second grade, you didn’t sit over the circuits of radio receivers, if you didn’t work, this vocation would hardly have appeared. A vocation is a small sprout of talent that has turned into a strong, mighty tree on the fertile soil of hard work. Without hard work, without self-education, this small sprout can dry out on the vine. Finding your calling, establishing yourself in it is a source of happiness. Mark Twain has an interesting story 9. It says: in "that" world there are no angels, no saints, no divine doing nothing, and people in paradise live the same working life as on a sinful earth. Paradise differs from earth in only one thing: there everyone is engaged in business according to his vocation. A shoemaker unknown on earth becomes a famous commander after death, and a mediocre general during his lifetime, but possessing a calligraphic handwriting, is content with the modest role of a clerk in the headquarters. The writer, tired of his readers with boring, useless novels, finds his true vocation in the profession of a metal turner. A person who accidentally became a teacher, torturing himself and his students all his life, turns out to be an excellent accountant. I have read this wonderful story more than once. It would be nice to achieve such a position already in "this" world. But, unfortunately, very often it is completely different. I know a lot of useless specialists: agronomists, teachers, engineers, artists. They, as they say, toil all their lives, are indifferent to their work, serve the day until evening. The most regrettable thing is that these people do not know the joy of labor, labor spirituality, obsession. What is the highest enjoyment of life? In my opinion, in creative work, something close to art. This approximation is in skill. If a person is in love with his work, he strives for something beautiful both in the process of work and in its results. I already wrote to you about our gardener and forester Efim Filippovich. In my entire life, I have met no more than twenty people like him. This is an amazing man; in the skill of work, of my craft, without any exaggeration, I compare him with Stanislavsky and Plastov, with Shostakovich and Alexei Ulesov (I will tell you about this man). He sculpts, creates, creates wood, how Stanislavsky created an image, how Plastov creates life on a piece of canvas. I saw him several times examining the little wild game from all sides, looking closely, finding that, as he says, the only point where it was necessary to inoculate. Finds this point, a small sprout appears, and from that time that great witchcraft of labor begins, thanks to which a person becomes a proud creator, artist, poet in his business. Efim Filippovich creates an amazingly beautiful crown of a tree. To learn this, to know this - you have to work alongside him for more than one year. And this will be the knowledge of man, the comprehension of beauty, art. This work contains the great happiness of being. Working to cognize the beauty in oneself is real work. Among the thousands of three-year-old saplings, I will always find the only one grown by the hands of Efim Filippovich. All his trees are directed towards the sun. The branches are located in the crown of his tree so that the sun plays on each leaf, the leaves do not shade each other. - How do you do it? - I once asked Yefim Filippovich. - Human wisdom is at your fingertips, - he answered. - I started to work from the age of three. And I advise you to educate schoolchildren in this way. Everyone should be the master in his own business - this is what we must not forget. If I started studying to be an engineer, or a doctor, or a teacher, nothing would come of me. It would turn out to be a person who earns his daily bread ... It is necessary that in each person his "spark" flared up - and then a real person will turn out. The vocation is created by the one who creates a person - everyone who educates him. But the owner of the inclinations himself creates his vocation. You love Bach's music. So, there were 58 musicians in the family of Johann Sebastian Bach. Great-grandfather is a musician, grandfather is a musician, father is a musician ... Even marriages were concluded within this family. Well, it turns out as if already at birth it was predetermined: this person will be a composer or an outstanding performer? It is known that approximately 80% of those born can become composers. Units become them. Why is this so? Why, after all, there were 58 outstanding musicians in the Bach family? Because these people themselves created their calling. Because the first impression in the life of every child in this family was music; the first beauty known in the surrounding world is a musical melody; the first surprise, amazement was surprise, amazement at the music; the first pride that a person experiences is the pride of enjoying the beauty of music, the pride of creation, of making music. Man is the master of his calling. I am not particularly enthusiastic about your enthusiasm: ah, what happiness it is to become a radio physicist; oh, how I love radiophysics. You can love what you have already given a particle of your soul to. It is very good that you have an interest in radiophysics, but remember that this is just an interest. Interest, multiplied by work, becomes the calling. And the multiplier is always many times less than the multiplier, only
then the derivative is a solid quantity. I want to advise you something. Science is developing at a rapid pace. If you want to be a good specialist in your field, keep an eye on the news in the field of radiophysics. What is given at lectures is only a small part of the knowledge you need like air. Set yourself the following rule: every day, literally every day, on a holiday, and on weekends, read and study at least five pages from scientific journals on radiophysics and related sciences of electronics, bionics, astrophysics, space biology, etc. I repeat once again: this should be done daily. Here you come, say, from a demonstration on the occasion of the May Day holiday - do not forget about your five pages. Nobody will do it for you. Remember that at the junction of sciences, discoveries are born, the unknown lurks. Therefore, pay special attention to related sciences. It is not by chance that I use the word study. The student must deeply comprehend, transform the facts and conclusions in his mind and only after comprehension write down in the workbook. Do not rewrite a scientific article or textbook, but write down what has already been deposited in your mind. The more you delve into mentally the subject that you consider your vocation, the more it will be your vocation. And one more piece of advice. In any specialty there is theoretical study and practical work, creativity. And in radiophysics, practical work can be especially interesting. Take the slightest opportunity to work in the laboratory, in the workshop. Mount the radio in existing radio-controlled models. And never be satisfied with a mediocre result. Strive for perfection - this is the way to cultivate a vocation. It didn't work the first time - do it again, do not disdain the most simple, rough work. Train, train your hand. Strive for your hand to be the most important tool, an instrument of mastery. I have an interesting article about the hand, about manual labor. I am sending it to you at the same time as the letter. I would like her to awaken the same feeling of amazement in you as in mine. I ask you to see if there is anything new in the psychology of labor and creativity in the bookstores. If you have - buy and come. I wish you good health and good spirits. I hug and kiss you. Your father. 6. Good afternoon, dear son!
I am very glad that you are arguing with me in your last letter. Okay, that's great. Apparently, the issue of vocation is one of the most troubling issues. You accuse me of overestimating the role of education and self-education and of underestimating what is given to man by nature. Yes, Beethoven wrote his first pieces of music at the age of five. But this is primarily due to the extremely favorable conditions in which Beethoven's childhood passed. Had he been in an environment where there are no musical instruments, where people do not know what a melody is, the talent of a musician would never have been born in him. I am sure that in thousands of people the inclinations given by nature are still disappearing; thousands of people could become outstanding scientists, poets, composers if their childhood was spent in conditions conducive to the birth of talent. This is the high humanism of the communist ideal, that not a single deposit will remain undeveloped under communism, all the inclinations will flourish and develop into talents. It is communism that makes it its ideal that every person becomes a talented worker, a talented creator. A talented locksmith, a talented electric welder, a talented agricultural technician, a talented livestock breeder - this is the ideal of our upbringing, and I deeply believe in this ideal. I know people who have become talented workers precisely because upbringing has revealed in them the life inherent in nature. Communism is an amazing harmony of the natural and the social in man. I love my pedagogical work precisely because the main thing in it is the knowledge of a person. Upbringing, I first of all get to know a person, I consider those numerous facets of his soul, in which something is hidden somewhere that will come out of a person, if these facets are skillfully touched and polished. The vision of the facets of the inexhaustible human soul is the skill of education. Here in front of me is a child who has difficulty in mathematics, it is not easy for him to study grammar, he has no pronounced mathematical or artistic thinking. But what does he have? There is, like every person, an inexhaustible soul with that unnoticed, unseen by me facet of the deposit, which hides his happiness, his future, if the educator opens and polishes this facet. He can become a talented machine operator, a talented grain grower, a talented carpenter - if he can only open his only facet. I firmly believe: the time will come when there will not be a single untalented, half-learned, disillusioned person in our society. Each will reveal its bright facet. This is still a dream, but it will be, I firmly believe in the mighty power of education. I know people who are in love with the most seemingly simple, unremarkable work, they became poets, artists in this work, they reached the pinnacle of creativity - and all this is precisely due to the fact that their life is illuminated by the happy harmony of what nature has given, and what education gave. I personally know a noble person of our country, twice Hero of Socialist Labor Alexei Ulesov - a builder and electric welder. I was drawn to the construction site as a boy, - he says. I saw how a friend was cooking a seam with a fiery welding - and, as if spellbound, followed him: "Teach." I learned. I built both cities in the north and hydroelectric power plants. One has only once in a lifetime to feel the happiness of being a creator on earth. It is worth seeing once how houses grow and populate, like your power plant, your first unit will give current. For me this is the great happiness of life ... Or another friend of mine - a noble livestock breeder of our country Stanislav Ivanovich Shteiman. Here is what he tells about his work: - I have never had to fly, climb mountains, swim on the sea. I have spent most of my life in barnyards and calves. But when I remember my life and work, it seems to me that, like a traveler, I have repeatedly made my way along unknown paths, not knowing what awaits me around the bend, more than once I felt like a climber who climbs mighty peaks ... these words, son. This is said by a former farm laborer-shepherd, his life turned out in such a way that he did not study a single day at the school desk, and only thanks to persistent work he became an outstanding scientist, doctor of sciences, a man who managed to breed a new, so-called Kostroma breed of cows. All his life he worked without a break at the "Karavaevo" state farm. Here's another confirmation that man is the creator of his calling. Only through work lies the path to wisdom, creativity, science. To affirm a vocation in oneself means to do something, to create something, and not to memorize ready-made truths, not to delve into your feelings, trying to find an answer to the question: do I like this job or not? A person likes what he put a particle of his soul into is the most important thing. Once again I advise you: never neglect the simplest, most "black", "dirty" work - creativity begins with it. Goodbye, dear son. I wish you good health and good spirits. Your father.
7. Good afternoon, dear son!
Do you doubt whether the collective farm chairman is right when he replied to a student who criticized him at a meeting: “You speak the truth, but the truth itself does not prevail. You are indignant: after all, the student is right, the collective farm from year to year loses from twenty to fifty hundredths of a hectare of fertile soil - is devoured by erosion. Where wheat was growing twenty years ago is now a ravine. Is it true or not? you ask. - If it is true, then why does the chairman answer as if the student is a demagogue? These are difficult questions of our life, son. I'll tell you one story. From childhood I remember one person in our village. His name was Zakharka, there was also a surname, but no one remembered the surname, but everyone called him Righteous. Why the Righteous is in this and the whole point of my story. He was a harmless, fair, very honest, peasantly righteous bum. People organized a collective farm, everyone worked - some in the field, some in the pigsty, some in the stable - and he, Zakharka, hung around everywhere and did nothing. But on the other hand, he always spoke the correct, just truths, that's why they called him the Righteous One. Collective farmers sit at the door of the office in the evening, talking about business, about the past and the future. Zakharka appears and speaks the truth: - It's time to sow, but there is no rain. The earth is like a stone. Throw the grain - it will be lost. He will say and be silent. Or another time: - These are the early frosts this year. All the tomatoes froze overnight. And once there was such a thing. After a summer downpour, Zakharka ran to the collective farm yard, approached the collective farmers, gazed at the sky with his blue eyes and said how a dead man is swaddled (so they say when they want to emphasize the indifference of words): The hail has gone beyond Oak Balka. One hundred dessiatines of wheat were lost. The collective farmers knew that Zakharka was telling the true truth, but they still beat him. They could not contain their indignation. They beat him with great resourcefulness: they took off Zakharka's dirty pants and "tickled him a little with willow twigs with nettles, where it should be ..." Why were Zakharka's people indignant at the truth? Because behind his cold, indifferent words, behind this "swaddling of a dead man" they felt a little thought: here it is, really, I spread it to you, but I myself stay on the sidelines, what does it matter ... People do not like such "truth-lovers". I think that the collective farm chairman is very tired of the chatter about the harm caused by erosion. From the experience of our collective farm, I know that it is very difficult for the chairman of the collective farm to really fight erosion. Very capacious, complex, sometimes deceptive, this concept is the truth. There is no abstract truth, no truth at all. There is no abstract truth. There is only one truth - that which gives, brings, does good to people. Whoever tries to act as a preacher of truth in the name of truth - without intending to make the truth, figuratively speaking, a tool for creating happiness for people - may find himself in the position of Zakharka the Righteous. Truth is at the root of everything we see and do. If you want to find the truth, and the search for truth is also a big work, when you discover the truth so that people can be better, if you want to find the truth, look at the root of things. Here is an interesting fairy tale compiled by our fourth grade students - I think if you think about it, it will help you understand the essence of truth, and most importantly, it will teach you to look and see who benefits from the truth, how to make it an instrument of doing good for the people, for a person labor. The tale is called:
Gingerbread and Spikelet
Early in the morning, before sunrise, the Man took a white Gingerbread in his pocket and went into the field. In the field, he walked through the crops, admired the wheat. He plucked a spikelet, took out a grain from it, tasted it on a tooth, smiled. He hid the Spikelet in his pocket. Spikelet and Gingerbread met.
- Who are you? - asked Gingerbread. - I am Spikelet. - Wow, how prickly you are. And what do you exist for? What is the use of you? Kolosok smiled, wiggled his mustache, and replies: - Without me there would be no bread, no rusks, no you. Gingerbread. Gingerbread was surprised, looked at the Spikelet with respect, made room for him, and made way for him. - So, - says Gingerbread, - everything is from you. But who is in charge of you? - Labor, - said Kolosok. - He creates everything. But labor is in the hands of Man. Labor and Man are the most important thing.
Here is a fairy tale worth pondering. It was compiled by fourth-grade students, but in order to raise children to such a level of creativity, the teacher had to put his feelings, thoughts, beliefs - a particle of his soul - into the hearts of children for years. Labor and Man, Man and Labor are the mother and father of all truths. In the upbringing of the younger generation, it is extremely important how the truth enters the spiritual world of Man and how the Man whom we educate enters the world of truth. Woe to the educator if a flower has blossomed from which Zakharka the Righteous can ripen (even greater woe to the school if Zakharka the Righteous is among the educators). There is such a sacred thing in our business as beliefs. This is also one of the hottest pages of the book of pedagogical wisdom: how many copies are broken in disputes about beliefs, how many thoughts are expressed, and yet there are still such cases that a person's chest is granite (knowledge), and his legs are clay (beliefs) ... Why does this happen? Because children and adolescents learn the truth, but do not take part in the struggle for the triumph of truth. They do nothing so that truth is expressed in creativity, in work, in action. Probably, over the years of being at school and at the institute, a person hears a thousand times: one must work for the good of the people, labor is honor, idleness is shame, etc. And what can you sometimes find in life? Recently I met a photographer who graduated from an industrial institute. Ten graduates of one university in our republic did not want to go to the village as teachers and settled in the city: some as a freight forwarder, who sells water in a stall, who runs a grocery store. Why, then, such an exalted truth as the nobility of labor for people has not become the spiritual core of these people? For many years the thought haunts me: our upbringing will only become communist in the full sense, when this most lofty, noblest truth of our convictions will be achieved through labor, the personal efforts of each pupil. Labor is the greatest beauty, but labor, at the same time, is hellishly difficult. To know this truth is one of the secrets of upbringing. I wish you good health and good spirits. I hug and kiss you.
Your father.
8. Good afternoon, dear son!
Yes, the most difficult thing must become the most beloved - this is the dialectic and logic of the formation of a person of firm convictions. Only by that will a person cherish all his life, which is dear to him. Love for work cannot be taken out of your pocket or put into the hands of a little person. This is a treasure that must be obtained by labor and only by labor. Unfortunately, some people believe that the joy of our life, the happiness of being in a socialist society can be revealed before the consciousness and heart of youth only by giving as much material wealth as possible. I want you to think about what haunts me: it's too easy for youth to get the blessings and joys of life. Many needs are brought up in young men and women, but, unfortunately, the most important of them, the communist need for work, is being brought up very poorly. Yes, exactly a communist need. I think that this is a deeply personal, emotional attraction to work for people. Such a state of mind when a person could not live without labor for society, people. LABOR will become a need only when the joy of work opens up before a person. This joy cannot be compared or contrasted with anything. It cannot be compared with the joy that excursions, sports, leisure, artistic values ​​give a person. The joy of labor is difficult. Like a child born in agony. The path to the joy of work is not easy; it can be compared to the exertion of the will of a climber; it is not pleasant to climb stones and rocks, but it is necessary in order to express yourself, to assert your honor, your dignity. To give a person an incomparable joy of work for people is the mission of the educator. To obtain this joy through labor is the mission of a person who has embarked on the path of self-education. The more I get to know the spiritual world of a person - my pet, the more I am convinced that, like Aphrodite from the foam of the sea, a real person is born where it is difficult, where the earth is watered with sweat, where a high feeling of victory over difficulties that seemed insurmountable is experienced. This feeling is the thread that connects the individual spiritual world of a person - his interests, aspirations with public interests and needs. A teenager who, looking around the first decade of his conscious life, sees his firmly rooted tree, sees the ripening fruits of grapes on a bush that he planted and nurtured, sees a spike of wheat where nothing had grown before, and this spike was grown by his hard work, which turned dead clay into fruit