: Stupid helpless generals find themselves on an uninhabited island, but even there they manage to find a man and force him to serve them. He dutifully gets food, builds a ship and takes them back to St. Petersburg.
Once upon a time there were two generals. They were born, grew up, and all their life they served in some kind of registry, therefore they were very stupid and from all the words they knew only: "accept the assurance of my perfect respect and devotion."
The registry was abolished, the generals were retired, and they settled in St. Petersburg, in different apartments of the same house. Each had a cook and a decent pension. So the generals enjoyed life until, by pike, they reached the uninhabited island.
They woke up under one blanket, both in nightgowns, and each had an order hanging on their neck. When the generals understood what had happened to them, they were very scared, burst into tears, and then got hungry.
One general suggested going east and west and looking for food, but as the generals did not try, they could not determine where the east was and where the west was. Then the second general, who once served as a teacher of calligraphy at the school for the soldiers' sons and was a little smarter than his comrade, suggested going right and left.
So the generals did. They saw that there were many fruit trees on the island, the rivers were full of fish, and the forests were wild game, only the generals couldn’t get all this food.
Who would have thought, Your Excellency, that human food, in its original form, flies, swims and grows on trees?
Only the old issue of the Moskovskiye Vedomosti newspaper was obtained.
They met in the old place and went to bed under the covers, but from hunger they could not sleep. They began to recall the fruits and grouse seen on the island, and were so starving that they snarled at each other with a growl. Only the sight of the flowing blood stopped them.
The generals tried to distract each other with conversation, but all their conversations came down to food. Then they began to read Moscow News, but only feasts and ceremonial dinners were described in detail there.
The generals were depressed, and then what served as a teacher of calligraphy dawned on me: we had to find a man who would feed them. It is known that men are everywhere, you just need to look well. The generals set off in search and found a huge man who was sleeping under a tree and was swinging away from work.
The generals were outraged, woke the man up and clung to him so that he could not escape. The peasant saw that the strict generals had fallen for him, and began to act. He picked up sweet apples, dug up potatoes, with the help of two pieces of wood he made a fire, he made a snare from his own hair and caught a hazel grouse. Finally, he prepared so much food that the generals even thought about giving a little parasite.
The generals looked at these peasant efforts, and their hearts played merrily.They already forgot that they nearly starved to death yesterday, and thought: how good it is to be generals — you will not disappear anywhere!
The generals ordered the peasant to make a rope and tied him by the leg to a tree so that he would not run away.
A few days have passed. The man got so skilled at the generals that he began to cook soup in a handful of them. The generals became cheerful, fat and well-fed, rejoiced that they lived here all ready, and in St. Petersburg their pensions were accumulated. Now they freely talked about philosophical topics and calmly read in the “Moscow Gazette” how “they ate in Moscow, ate in Tula, ate in Penza, ate in Ryazan”.
Soon, the generals missed their cooks and uniforms with gold embroidery and began to force the peasant to take them home. It turned out that the man knew the street where the generals lived, he painted the roofs and walls of houses there. The peasant decided to please the generals "because they, his parasite, granted him and did not disdain his peasant labor," and deliver them to Petersburg.
He built a vessel on which to cross the ocean-sea, laid the bottom with swan fluff, laid the generals on it and swam. On the way, the generals ate herrings and suffered fear "from the storms and from the different winds."
Finally, sailed to St. Petersburg. The cooks were delighted to see their generals so cheerful, white and loose. The generals put on their uniforms, went to the treasury and raked in a bunch of money. They didn’t forget about the peasant either, "they sent him a glass of vodka and a nickel of silver: have fun, man."
