Main character the story is about a 12-year-old boy Vanya Solntsev. He lived in one of the Russian villages. Vanya's father died in the war, and his mother was killed by the Germans. Soon his sister and grandmother died of hunger, and Vanya was left alone. While he was begging in the village, he was caught by gendarmes and sent to a detention center. Vanya escaped from the detention center and tried to cross the front line to get into our army. Russian scouts found Vanya in the forest - he was sleeping in a hole and crying in his sleep. They took Vanya to an artillery battery, the commander of which was Captain Enakiev. Seeing Vanya, the captain remembered his wife and son, who died during an artillery raid. He realized that the boy could not remain at the battery and therefore ordered Vanya to be sent to the rear. But Vanya escaped from Corporal Bidenko, who was tasked with delivering the boy to his destination. Moreover, he ran away from him more than once. The first time he jumped out of the truck at full speed, and the corporal was able to find him in the forest only by accident - the boy climbed a tree, and the primer that Vanya was carrying with him fell out of his bag. The primer fell directly on Bidenko's head. Then, having hitched a ride with the boy, the corporal tied him to his arm with a rope. At night, from time to time he pulled the rope, checking if the boy was still there. It was only in the morning that he discovered that the rope was tied to the leg of a woman who was riding in the same truck.

Vanya walked through the forest for two days in search of an artillery battery. He wanted to talk to Captain Enakiev, since his departure to the rear seemed to him to be a real misunderstanding. And it was just the captain that he met, though not knowing that this was Yenakiev. He told him about how the scouts found him and how he escaped from Bidenko. The captain brought him back to the battery. So Vanya became the “son of the regiment”.

Soon, scouts Bidenko and Gorbunkov were given the order to reconnoiter the location of German units. They took Vanya with them, since he had not yet received a military uniform and looked very much like a little shepherd. And Vanya knew these places very well, and could lead scouts along paths that no one knows. But Vanya decided to contribute to the lesson and began to sketch the location of the fords on the river in his primer. At that moment the Germans found him. Bidenko ran to the commander to report what had happened. Enakiev was very angry with the scouts for taking Vanya with them, and sent a whole detachment to the boy’s rescue. But at this time the offensive of our units began, and the Germans began to retreat, completely forgetting about the “shepherd” they had captured. So Vanya ended up with the scouts again.

After this, Vanya was given military uniform and Captain Enakiev, who became increasingly attached to the boy, ordered him to be assigned to the first gun of one of the battery platoons in order for him to help the artillerymen.

Our units had already approached the border with Germany, and Enakiev’s battery was preparing for battle. The gun to which Vanya was assigned ended up in the very center of the battle. The captain, who just on the eve of the battle shared with the gunner his desire to adopt Vanya, found out about this, got to the gun and tried to send Vanya to a safe place. But he flatly refused to leave. Then the captain took a piece of paper, wrote something on it and gave it to Vanya with the order to take the note to headquarters. Vanya could not help but follow the order. He delivered the package to headquarters and headed back.

Returning to the battery, he learned that everyone who was near the first gun had died - captain Enakiev, in order to cover the movement of our units, “called fire on himself.” Before his death, the captain wrote a note asking him to take care of Van. After the captain was buried, as he requested in his farewell note, native land, Corporal Bidenko took Vanya to the Suvorov Military School.

Valentin Petrovich Kataev

SON OF A REGIMENT

Tale

Dedicated to Zhenya and Pavlik Kataev

By a resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR of June 26, 1946, Valentin Petrovich Kataev was awarded the Stalin Prize of the Second Degree for the story “Son of the Regiment.”

Valentin Petrovich Kataev wrote his story “Son of the Regiment” in 1944, during the Great Patriotic War Patriotic War our people from fascist invaders. More than thirty years have passed since then. We remember our great victory with pride.

The war brought our country a lot of grief, troubles and misfortunes. She destroyed hundreds of cities and sows. She destroyed millions of people. She deprived thousands of children of their fathers and mothers. But the Soviet people won this war. He won because he was completely devoted to his homeland. He won because he showed a lot of endurance, courage and bravery. He won because he could not help but win: it was a just war for happiness and peace on earth.

The story “Son of the Regiment” will take you, young reader, back to the difficult but heroic events of the war years, which you know about only from textbooks and the stories of your elders. She will help you see these events as if with your own eyes.

You will learn about the fate of a simple peasant boy, Vanya Solntsev, from whom the war took everything: family and friends, home and childhood itself. Together with him you will go through many trials and experience the joy of exploits in the name of victory over the enemy. You will meet wonderful people - the soldiers of our army, Sergeant Egorov and Captain Enakiev, gunner Kovalev and Corporal Bidenko, who not only helped Vanya become a brave intelligence officer, but also raised him in best qualities a real Soviet man. And, after reading the story, you, of course, will understand that a feat is not just courage and heroism, but also great work, iron discipline, inflexibility of will and great love for the Motherland.

The story “Son of the Regiment” was written by a great Soviet artist, a wonderful master of words. You will read it with interest and excitement, because it is a truthful, fascinating and vivid book.

The works of Valentin Petrovich Kataev are known and loved by millions of readers. You probably also know his books “The Lonely Sail Whitens”, “I am the Son of the Working People”, “A Farm in the Steppe”, “For the Power of the Soviets”... And if you don’t know, then you will definitely meet them - it will be a good and joyful meeting.

The books of V. Kataev will tell you about the glorious revolutionary deeds of our people, about the heroic youth of your fathers and mothers, and will teach you to love our beautiful Motherland - the Land of the Soviets - even more.

It was the middle of a dead autumn night. It was very damp and cold in the forest. A thick fog rose from the black forest swamps, littered with small brown leaves.

The moon was overhead. It shone very strongly, but its light barely penetrated the fog. The moonlight stood near the trees in long, slanting ledges, in which, magically changing, strands of swamp vapors floated.

The forest was mixed. Now, in the strip of moonlight, an impenetrably black silhouette of a huge spruce tree appeared, looking like a multi-story tower; then suddenly a white colonnade of birches appeared in the distance; then in the clearing, against the backdrop of the white, moonlit sky, which had fallen into pieces like curdled milk, bare aspen branches were subtly drawn, sadly surrounded by a rainbow glow.

And everywhere, where the forest was thinner, white canvases of moonlight lay on the ground.

In general, it was beautiful with that ancient, wondrous beauty that always says so much to the Russian heart and makes the imagination draw fabulous pictures: a gray wolf carrying Ivan Tsarevich in a small cap on one side and with a Firebird feather in a scarf in his bosom, huge mossy the paws of a devil, a hut on chicken legs - you never know what else!

But least of all in this dark, dead hour, three soldiers returning from reconnaissance thought about the beauty of the Polesie thicket.

They spent more than a day behind German lines, carrying out a combat mission. And this task was to find and mark on the map the location of enemy structures.

The work was difficult and very dangerous. We crawled almost the entire time. Once I had to lie motionless for three hours in a row in a swamp - in cold, stinking mud, covered with raincoats, covered with yellow leaves on top.

We dined on crackers and cold tea from flasks.

But the hardest thing was that I never managed to smoke. And, as you know, it is easier for a soldier to do without food and without sleep than without taking a puff of good, strong tobacco. And, as luck would have it, all three soldiers were heavy smokers. So, although the combat mission was completed as well as possible and in the senior’s bag there was a map on which more than a dozen thoroughly explored German batteries were marked with great accuracy, the scouts felt irritated and angry.

The closer it was to its leading edge, the more I wanted to smoke. In such cases, as you know, a strong word or a funny joke helps a lot. But the situation demanded complete silence. It was impossible not only to exchange a word, but even to blow your nose or cough: every sound was heard unusually loudly in the forest.

The moon also got in the way. We had to walk very slowly, in single file, about thirteen meters apart from each other, trying not to fall into the streaks of moonlight, and stop and listen every five steps.

The elder walked ahead, giving the command with a careful movement of his hand: raise his hand above his head - everyone immediately stopped and froze; stretches his arm to the side with an inclination towards the ground - everyone at the same second quickly and silently lay down; waves his hand forward - everyone moved forward; will show back - everyone slowly backed away.

Although no more than two kilometers remained to the front line, the scouts continued to walk as carefully and prudently as before. Perhaps now they walked even more carefully, stopping more often.

They had entered the most dangerous part of their journey.

Yesterday evening, when they went out on reconnaissance, there were still deep German rear areas here. But the situation has changed. In the afternoon, after the battle, the Germans retreated. And now here, in this forest, it was apparently empty. But it could only seem so. It is possible that the Germans left their machine gunners here. Every minute you could run into an ambush. Of course, the scouts - although there were only three of them - were not afraid of an ambush. They were careful, experienced and ready to take on a fight at any moment. Each had a machine gun, a lot of ammunition and four hand grenades. But the fact of the matter is that there was no way to accept the fight. The task was to go over to your side as quietly and unnoticed as possible and quickly deliver to the commander of the control platoon a precious map with spotted German batteries. The success of tomorrow's battle largely depended on this. Everything around was unusually quiet. It was a rare moment of calm. Apart from a few distant cannon shots and a short machine-gun burst somewhere to the side, one would think that there was no war in the world.

The main characters in Kataev's story are the following characters.

Vanya Solntsev is a twelve-year-old teenager, an orphan, who was encountered by a detachment of Soviet intelligence officers. He became the “son of the regiment”, to whom the soldiers gave the nickname “shepherd”. After the war, he was enrolled in the Suvorov Military School.

Captain Enakiev is a thirty-two-year-old battery commander. He decided to adopt Vanya, but died during one of the battles.

Corporal Bidenko is an intelligence officer who worked as a miner in the Donbass before the war. He was called the "bony giant." It was he, along with Gorbunov and Egorov, who picked up Vanya in the forest.

Sergeant Egorov is a twenty-two-year-old intelligence officer.

Corporal Gorbunov is a scout and friend of Bidenko. Before the war he worked as a lumberjack in Transbaikalia. The fighters called him “Siberian” and “hero.”

Chapters 1-7

Autumn, damp and cold forest at night. Three scouts return from a mission. Suddenly they discover a boy raving in his sleep in an abandoned and dilapidated trench. Waking up, the teenager jumped up sharply and grabbed a “large sharpened nail” to protect himself from an enemy attack. Sergeant Egorov reassured him, saying that they were “theirs.”

There is an acquaintance with the commander of the artillery battery, Captain Enakiev, whom all the soldiers respected. He was a brave soldier, but at the same time he was distinguished by special restraint, cold and calculating reason.

The found twelve-year-old teenager Vanya Solntsev turned out to be an orphan. All his relatives died in the war (his father fought at the front, his mother was killed by the Nazis in occupied territory, and his sister and grandmother died of starvation). When the boy was “picking up the pieces,” the gendarmes grabbed him and put him in a children’s isolation ward, where he managed to get sick with typhus and scabies before escaping from the Nazis, almost dying. In his traveling bag, with which he tried to cross the front line, they found a tattered primer and a sharpened nail, which served him as a bladed weapon for protection. Vanya reminded Enakiev of his mother, wife and seven-year-old son who died back in 1941.

The fighters fed the hungry teenager plenty of “extraordinarily tasty little baby.” “For the first time in these three years, Vanya was among people who did not need to be feared.” They promised to train him in military affairs and provide him with “all types of allowance.” However, Enakiev gives orders to send the boy to an orphanage, which is located in the rear. Vanya gets very upset and gives his word that he will run away there by road.

The next day, late in the evening, Corporal Bidenko returns to his military unit. He is silent and gloomy. At this time, the front line moved very far to the west. After questioning his fellow soldiers, he finally admits that while accompanying Vanya to the rear, he ran away from him twice. The first time Bidenko found him was after the teenager, at a turn, managed to jump straight out of the truck and hide in the forest, falling asleep on the top of a tree. Only the primer that fell from the bag onto the corporal's head gave away his location.

And the second escape was already “successful”. Moreover, the boy escaped in the morning, tying a rope from his hand to the boot of a female doctor who was traveling with them. The sergeant periodically pulled the rope in his sleep, wound with the other end around his fist, to confirm that the “escorted” was present in his place. However, the teenager was savvy and easily realized his plan.

Chapters 8-14

Solntsev wandered along different roads for a long time until he found the headquarters of some military unit. During this trip, he met a “luxurious boy” who was dressed in a guards uniform and served as a messenger under a certain Major Voznesensky. This meeting turned out to be fateful, because from that moment Vanya began to be delirious with the idea of ​​​​returning to the scouts, which he decided to ask the “chief commander” about after he found him.

Since Vanya did not see Yenakiev in person, mistaking him for an “important commander,” he began to complain about the strict captain, who did not want to make him “the son of the regiment.” Enakiev decides to take the boy to the scouts, who were very happy about his return. “So Vanya’s fate turned out magically three times in such a short time.”

Scouts Gorbunov and Bidenko take Solntsev with them on a mission without reporting this to the battery commander. The boy knew the area very well and could serve as an excellent guide for them. Moreover, he was not yet equipped with uniforms and in his shabby clothes he looked very much like a “real village shepherd.”

During the mission, Vanya went ahead to find out the way. However, while he was sketching in the margins of a primer of the area plan, he was captured by the Germans, who arrested him and placed him in a dark dugout. After a few hours later only one horse returned to the meeting place, Bidenko went to the unit to report the incident.

Vanya’s interrogation was carried out by a German woman who had obvious evidence in the form of a compass and drawings in a primer. However, the boy showed firmness and perseverance without telling the enemy anything.

Chapters 15-21

The little hero hears the deafening sound of an artillery attack by our troops in the dugout. Suddenly the dungeon doors are shattered by a direct hit from a shell. The Germans retreat, and soon Soviet soldiers appear.

After Vanya returned to the scouts again, they took him to the bathhouse, cut his hair and provided him with a full uniform, putting him on full allowance.

Captain Enakiev, having learned about the dangerous mission in which the “son of the regiment” participated, gave a beating to his soldiers, who, in his opinion, loved young hero"too much fun." After that, he called Vanya to his place and officially appointed him as his contact.

After his appointment, Solntsev began to live with the captain in his dugout. Enakiev decided to personally take care of the boy’s upbringing and “assigned him to the first gun of the first platoon as a reserve number.” At first, the “son of the regiment” began to miss his scout friends, but soon got used to the new conditions and realized that this “family” was no worse than the old one.

It so happened that, while talking with the gunner Kovalev, the captain shared with him his plans to adopt Vanya after the war. Suddenly, German troops began to advance and surrounded the Soviet infantry units.

Chapters 23-27

“Captain Enakiev ordered by telephone the first platoon of his battery to immediately remove itself from its position and, without wasting a second, move forward. And he ordered the second platoon to shoot all the time, covering the open flanks of Captain Akhunbaev’s strike company.”

Since Vanya was assigned to the first platoon, he was in the thick of things and actively helped his comrades in arms. During the battle, the captain, noticing Vanya, orders him to return to the battery. The boy refuses. Then Enakiev orders him to urgently deliver the service package to the headquarters commander.

After returning to his platoon's position, Vanya learns that the battle is over with heavy losses on his part. The soldiers, having fired all the cartridges, entered into hand-to-hand combat with the enemy, during which the captain was also killed. The boy found his body on the gun carriage. Bidenko approached the “son of the regiment,” whom he hugged and cried.

After examining the personal belongings of the deceased captain Enakiev, a note was found in which he said goodbye to the battery and expressed the wish to be buried in his “native land.” In addition, the battery commander asked to take care of the fate of Vanya Solntsev. And after some time, Bidenko, on the orders of the regiment commander, took the boy to the Suvorov Military School. Along with soap and food, the soldiers gave him the shoulder straps of Captain Enakiev, which they carefully wrapped in a newspaper sheet from “Suvorov’s Onslaught.”

Vanya’s first night at the Suvorov School was accompanied by a dream about him running up a marble staircase, “surrounded by cannons, drums and pipes.” And a gray-haired old man, who had a diamond star attached to his chest, helped him climb up. He told him: “Go, little shepherd... Walk boldly!”

Conclusion

In his famous book “Son of the Regiment” V.P. Kataev tells the truth and interesting story peasant boy Vanya Solntsev, who became a folk hero and became famous throughout the world. The war took away his family and home. However, the teenager did not lose heart. And the difficult trials that befell him only strengthened his spirit. Among the soldiers, the “son of the regiment” found a second family, with whom he was able to show his character, endurance and courage. This work was filmed twice and also staged on the theater stage of the Youth Theater in Leningrad. The story was written in the literary genre of socialist realism and was awarded the Stalin Prize, II degree. It is still included in the 4th grade literature curriculum today.

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The main character of the story is a 12-year-old boy Vanya Solntsev. He lived in one of the Russian villages. Vanya's father died in the war, and his mother was killed by the Germans. Soon his sister and grandmother died of hunger, and Vanya was left alone. While he was begging in the village, he was caught by gendarmes and sent to a detention center. Vanya escaped from the detention center and tried to cross the front line to get into our army. Russian scouts found Vanya in the forest - he was sleeping in a hole and crying in his sleep. They took Vanya to an artillery battery, the commander of which was Captain Enakiev. Seeing Vanya, the captain remembered his wife and son, who died during an artillery raid. He realized that the boy could not remain at the battery and therefore ordered Vanya to be sent to the rear. But Vanya escaped from Corporal Bidenko, who was tasked with delivering the boy to his destination. Moreover, he ran away from him more than once. The first time he jumped out of the truck at full speed, and the corporal was able to find him in the forest only by accident - the boy climbed a tree, and the primer that Vanya carried with him fell out of his bag. The primer fell directly on Bidenko's head. Then, having hitched a ride with the boy, the corporal tied him to his hand with a rope. At night, from time to time he pulled the rope, checking if the boy was still there. It was only in the morning that he discovered that the rope was tied to the leg of a woman who was riding in the same truck.

Vanya walked through the forest for two days in search of an artillery battery. He wanted to talk to Captain Enakiev, since his departure to the rear seemed to him a real misunderstanding. And it was just the captain that he met, though not knowing that this was Yenakiev. He told him about how the scouts found him and how he escaped from Bidenko. The captain brought him back to the battery. So Vanya became the “son of the regiment.”

Soon, scouts Bidenko and Gorbunkov were given the order to reconnoiter the location of German units. They took Vanya with them, since he had not yet received a military uniform and looked very much like a little shepherd. And Vanya knew these places very well, and could lead scouts along paths that no one knows. But Vanya decided to contribute to the lesson and began to sketch the location of the fords on the river in his primer. At that moment the Germans found him. Bidenko ran to the commander to report what had happened. Enakiev was very angry with the scouts for taking Vanya with them, and sent a whole detachment to the boy’s rescue. But at this time the offensive of our units began, and the Germans began to retreat, completely forgetting about the “shepherd” they had captured. So Vanya ended up with the scouts again.

After this, Vanya was given a military uniform and Captain Enakiev, who became increasingly attached to the boy, ordered him to be assigned to the first gun of one of the battery platoons in order for him to help the artillerymen.

Our units had already approached the border with Germany, and Enakiev’s battery was preparing for battle. The gun to which Vanya was assigned ended up in the very center of the battle. The captain, who just on the eve of the battle shared with the gunner his desire to adopt Vanya, found out about this, got to the gun and tried to send Vanya to a safe place. But he flatly refused to leave. Then the captain took a piece of paper, wrote something on it and gave it to Vanya with the order to take the note to headquarters. Vanya could not help but follow the order. He delivered the package to headquarters and headed back.

Returning to the battery, he learned that everyone who was near the first gun had died - captain Enakiev, in order to cover the movement of our units, “called fire on himself.” Before his death, the captain wrote a note asking him to take care of Van. After the captain was buried, as he asked in his farewell note, in his native land, Corporal Bidenko took Vanya to the Suvorov Military School.

Year of publication of the book: 1945

On the eve of Victory Day, Kataev’s story “Son of the Regiment” is becoming more and more popular to read online every year. After all, books about the war are now experiencing an unprecedented increase in popularity and the once forgotten works “”, “” and many others are acquiring a second life. Therefore, it is not surprising that one of the iconic works about the Second World War, Kataev’s story “Son of the Regiment,” is also experiencing an increase in interest.

The story “Son of the Regiment” summary

If you read the story “Son of the Regiment” summary, then the story should begin with how they found the main character - Vanya Solntsev. During the raid, scouts discovered him in a trench. He was asleep and delirious. But as soon as the flashlight light fell on him, he pulled out a nail. Sergeant Egorov barely managed to intercept his hand.

Further in the story “Son of the Regiment” you can read the life story of the main character. His father died in the first days of the war, his mother was killed by the Germans, and he himself has been wandering through the forests for almost three years. Having learned this, Egorov reports about Van to Captain Enakiev. But, despite the requests of the scouts to keep the boy with him, he gives the order to take him to the rear. This is entrusted to Corporal Bidenko. But Vanya Solntsev jumps out of the truck and hides in the forest. The corporal searches for him in the forest for more than two hours and finds him only thanks to the primer, which Vanya unfortunately dropped while he was sitting in a tree. Now Bidenko is deciding to take more formidable measures. He ties Vanya’s hand with sea knots, and attaches the rope to his elbow. During the trip, he periodically tugs on the rope. But during one of the regular checks he hears the indignant voice of a woman to whom a rope is now tied.

If you read the summary further from “Son of the Regiment,” you will find out how Vanya meets another teenager. He boasts that he is the son of a regiment and even went on a raid once. Vanya likes this idea, and he decides to go to headquarters and complain about Captain Enakiev, who sent him to the rear. But in some cases, near the headquarters, he encounters just him. After listening to the boy, Captain Enakiev takes him to the scouts and gives them bail. The nickname Shepherds immediately stuck to Vanya.

The further fate of the protagonist of Kataev’s story “Son of the Regiment” was determined by a difficult battle. During it, Captain Enakiev dies, and a note is found in his pants in which he calls Vanya Solntsev his named son and asks to make him a real officer. The commander of the artillery regiment, having learned about this, sends Vanya to the Suvorov Military School. The entire scout squad gathers him on the road and gives him the shoulder straps of Captain Enakiev as parting words. Kataev’s story “Son of the Regiment” ends with how the old general, the head of the school, examining the sleeping children, stands for a long time near Vanya’s bed and remembers himself at Vanya’s age.

Kataev’s story “Son of the Regiment” on the Top books website

Kataev’s story “Son of the Regiment” is so popular to read online that the book is included in our rating. And despite the fact that interest in a work awakens only during its passage in school curriculum and on the eve of Victory Day, the book will be presented more than once in our ratings of books by genre. After all, it has already become a kind of symbol of the Great Victory.

You can read Kataev’s story “Son of the Regiment” online in full on the Top Books website.