Mikhail Sholokhov (1905-1984) - Russian prose writer, journalist, screenwriter. Received the Nobel Prize in 1965 for his contribution to world literature (an epic novel about the Russian Cossacks "Quiet Don"). In 1941 he became a laureate of the Stalin Prize, in 1960 - the Lenin Prize, in 1967 and 1980 - the Hero of Socialist Labor.
The future outstanding writer was born in 1905 (Kruzhilin farm, Veshenskaya stanitsa) in a well-to-do family, his father is a clerk of a commercial store and a steam mill manager, his mother is a Cossack by birth, was a servant in the landlord Yasenevka estate, she was forcibly married to a Cossack village ataman Kuznetsova. After parting with him, Anastasia Chernyak began to live with Alexander Sholokhov, their son Mikhail was born out of wedlock and was called Kuznetsov (by the name of her ex-husband) until they officially divorced and she married Alexander Sholokhov in 1912.
After the head of the family got a new job in another village, the family moved to a new place of residence. Little Misha was taught to read and write by a local teacher invited to his home, in 1914 he began to study in the preparatory class of the Moscow men's gymnasium. 1915-1918 - studying at the gymnasium in Boguchary (Voronezh province). In 1920, after the Bolsheviks came to power, the Sholokhovs moved to the village of Karginskaya, where his father became the head of the procurement office, and his son was in charge of office work in the village revolutionary committee. After completing the Rostov tax courses, Sholokhov became a food inspector in the village of Bukanovskaya, where, as part of the food detachments, he participated in the food appropriation, was captured by Makhno. In September 1922, Mikhail Sholokhov was taken into custody, a criminal case was opened against him and even a court verdict was passed - execution, which was never carried out. Thanks to the intervention of his father, who made a large bail for him and corrected his birth documents, according to which he became a minor, he was released already in March 1923, having been awarded a year of corrective labor in a juvenile colony and sent to Bolshevo (Moscow region).
Having gone to the capital, Sholokhov tries to become a worker's faculty member, which he fails, since he has no work experience and the direction of the Komsomol organization. The future writer worked as a handyman, attended various literary circles and educational classes, where the teachers were well-known personalities at that time such as Alexander Aseev, Osip Brik, Viktor Shklovsky. In 1923, the newspaper "Yunosheskaya Pravda" published a feuilleton "Test" by Sholokhov, and later several more works "Three", "The Inspector General".
In the same year, after visiting his parents who lived in the village of Bukanovskaya, Sholokhov decided to propose to Lydia Gromoslavskaya. But convinced by the future father-in-law (former village chieftain) “to make a man out of him,” he marries not Lydia, but her older sister, Maria, with whom they had four children in the future (two sons and two daughters).
At the end of 1924, the newspaper "Young Leninist" published Sholokhov's story "The Birthmark", which was included in the cycle of Don stories ("Shepherd", "Foal", "Family Man", etc.), later combined into collections "Don Stories" ( 1926), "Azure Steppe" (1926), "About Kolchak, nettles and other things" (1927). These works did not bring the author much popularity, however, they marked the advent of a new writer in Soviet Russian literature, who was able to notice and reflect in a vivid literary form important trends in the life of that time.
In 1928, while living with his family in the village of Veshenskaya, Sholokhov began work on his most grandiose brainchild - an epic novel in four volumes "Quiet Don", in which he reflected the fate of the Don Cossacks during the First World War and further civil bloodshed. The novel was published in 1940 and was highly praised by both the party leadership of the country and Comrade Stalin himself. During World War II, the novel was translated into many Western European languages \u200b\u200band gained great popularity not only in Russia, but also far beyond its borders. In 1965, Sholokhov was nominated for the Nobel Prize, and became the only Soviet writer to receive it with the personal approval of the then leadership of the Soviet Union. In the period from 1932 to 1959, Sholokhov wrote another of his famous novel in two volumes on collectivization, Virgin Soil Upturned, for which he received the Lenin Prize in 1960.
During the war years, Mikhail Sholokhov served as a war correspondent, at that difficult time for the country, many stories and stories were written, which described the fate of ordinary people who fell into the millstones of war: stories "The fate of a man", "Science of hatred", the unfinished story "They fought for the Motherland. " Subsequently, these works were filmed and became real classics of Soviet cinema, which made an indelible impression on the audience, striking them with their tragedy, humanity and unchanging patriotism.
In the post-war period, Sholokhov published a number of journalism "The Word about the Motherland", "Light and Darkness", "The Struggle Continues", etc. In the early 60s, he gradually moved away from literary activity, returned from Moscow to the village of Veshenskaya, went hunting and fishing. He donates all the awards received for his literary achievements for the construction of schools in his native places. In the last years of his life, he was seriously ill and stoically endured the consequences of two strokes, diabetes, and, ultimately, an oncological disease of the larynx - throat cancer. His earthly journey ended on February 21, 1984, his remains were buried in the village of Veshenskaya, in the courtyard of his house.
Sholokhov Mikhail Alexandrovich - the great Russian writer, Nobel Prize winner, deputy, Stalin Prize laureate, academician, twice Hero of Socialist Labor, author of novels " Quiet Don", "Virgin Soil Upturned"unfinished epic" They fought for their homeland".
Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov was born on May 11 (24), 1905 on the Kruzhilin farm of the village of Vyoshenskaya (now the Sholokhovsky district of the Rostov region) in a peasant family. Mikhail Sholokhov studied at a parish school, then at a gymnasium, graduated from four classes when the revolution and civil war began.
In October 1922 he came to Moscow to study.
In 1923 the first feuilleton is published in the newspaper "Yunosheskaya Pravda" "Test" with the signature "M. Sholokhov". In 1924 his first story was published "Mole".
January 11, 1924 M. A. Sholokhov married M. P. Gromoslavskaya, the daughter of the former village chieftain. In this marriage, the writer had four children.
In 1926 collections are coming out "Don stories" and "Azure Steppe"... At the end of 1926 he began to write a novel "Quiet Don".
In 1932 M. A. Sholokhov's novel is published "Virgin Soil Upturned.
In the 1930s Sholokhov finishes the third and fourth books "Quiet Don".
During the Great Patriotic War, Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov was a war correspondent, began publishing chapters from a new novel "They fought for the Motherland".
In the 1950s, he worked on a sequel to the novel "They fought for the Motherland",published a story "The fate of man"... In 1960, Sholokhov's second book was published "Virgin Soil Upturned".
In 1965 Sholokhov M.A. awarded Nobel Prize for novel "Quiet Don".
Biography of M.A. Sholokhov
The scientific biography of M. A. Sholokhov has not yet been written. The available research leaves many blank spots in the history of his life. The official Soviet science often kept silent about many of the events the writer witnessed or participated in, and he himself, judging by the memoirs of his contemporaries, did not like to advertise the details of his life. In addition, in the literature about Sholokhov, attempts were often made to give an unambiguous assessment of his personality and work. Moreover, both the canonization of Sholokhov in the Soviet period and the desire to overthrow him from the erected pedestal in the works of the 80-90s led to the fact that in the minds of the mass reader a simplified, and most often distorted, idea about the author of The Quiet Don and Virgin Soil Upturned. And yet Sholokhov is an extremely controversial figure. A contemporary of the first Russian revolution, who began his career during the formation of Soviet literature and passed away shortly before the collapse of totalitarianism in Russia, he was truly the son of his century. The contradictions of his personality were in many ways a reflection of the contradictions of the Soviet era itself, the events of which to this day give rise to polar assessments, both in science and in public opinion.
MA Sholokhov was born on May 24, 1905 on the Kruzhilin farm of the village of Veshenskaya, Donetsk District of the Don Cossack Region, although this date probably needs to be clarified.
The writer's father, Alexander Mikhailovich (1865-1925), was a native of the Ryazan province, repeatedly changed professions: “He was consistently“ shibai ”(buy-in of cattle), sowed bread on purchased Cossack land, served as a salesman in a commercial enterprise on a farm scale, was a steam plant manager mills, etc.
Mother, Anastasia Danilovna (1871-1942), "half-casque, half-peasant", served as a maid. In her youth, she was married against her will to the Cossack Ataman S. Kuznetsov, but, having become friends with A. M. Sholokhov, left him. The future writer was born illegitimate and until 1912 bore the surname of his mother's first husband, while having all the Cossack privileges. Only when Alexander Mikhailovich and Anastasia Danilovna got married, and his father adopted him, did Sholokhov find his real surname, losing at the same time his belonging to the Cossack estate, as the son of a bourgeois, that is, a "nonresident".
To give his son an initial education, the father hired a home teacher, T. T. Mrykhin, in 1912 he sent his son to the Karginsky male parish school for the second grade. In 1914 he took him to Moscow for an eye disease (the clinic of Dr. Snegirev, where Sholokhov was treated, will be described in the novel "Quiet Don") and sent him to the preparatory class of the Moscow gymnasium No. G. Shelaputin. In 1915, the parents transferred Mikhail to the Bogucharovskaya gymnasium, but his studies were interrupted by revolutionary events. It was not possible to complete his education at the Veshenskaya mixed gymnasium, where Sholokhov entered in 1918. Due to the war that flared up around the village, he was forced to interrupt his education, completing only four classes.
From 1919 until the end of the Civil War, Sholokhov lived on the Don, in the villages of Elanskaya and Karginskaya, seized by the Upper Don uprising, that is, he was in the center of those dramatic events that will be described in the final books of The Quiet Don.
Since 1920, when Soviet power was finally established on the Don, Mikhail Sholokhov, despite his young years, and he was 15 years old, worked as a teacher to eliminate illiteracy.
In May 1922, Sholokhov completed a short-term course in the food inspection in Rostov and was sent to the village of Bukanovskaya as a tax inspector. Was tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal for abuse of power. By a special meeting of the Revolutionary Tribunal "for a crime ex officio," Sholokhov was sentenced to death. For two days he waited for imminent death, but fate was pleased to spare Sholokhov. According to some reports, it was then that he indicated 1905 as the year of birth in order to hide his real age and impersonate a minor, while in fact he was born a year or two earlier.
In the fall of 1922, Sholokhov arrived in Moscow with the intention of entering a workers' school. However, he did not have any work experience or a Komsomol permit, which were required for admission. It was not easy to find a job either, since Sholokhov had not mastered any profession by that time. The labor exchange was hazy to provide him with only the most unskilled job, so at first he was forced to work as a loader at the Yaroslavsky station and pave cobblestones. Later, he received a referral to the post of accountant in the housing department in Krasnaya Presnya. All this time Sholokhov was engaged in self-education and, on the recommendation of the novice writer Kudashev, was admitted to the literary group "Young Guard". On September 19, 1923, Sholokhov's literary debut took place: his feuilleton "Test", signed by M. Sholokhov, appeared in the newspaper.
On January 11, 1924, M.A.Sholokhov married the daughter of the former village chieftain Maria Petrovna Gromoslavskaya (1902-1992), tying her fate in her for sixty years. It was 1924 that can be considered the beginning of Sholokhov's professional career as a writer. On December 14, the newspaper "Young Sloth" published the first of Sholokhov's "Don stories", "The Birthmark", on February 14, the same newspaper published the story "Prodcomissar", after which "Shepherd" (February), "Shibalkovo Semya" are rapidly published one after another , "Ilyukha", "Alyoshka" (March), "Melon" (April), "Path-path" (April-May), "Nakhalenok" (May-June), "Family man", "Kolovert" (June) , "Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic" (July), "Curve Stitch" (November) In the same period, Sholokhov became a member of the RAPP.
Even while working on "Don Stories" M. Sholokhov conceived to write a story about the chairman of the Donskoy Council of People's Commissars F.G. Podtelkov and his associate secretary of the Don Cossack Military Revolutionary Committee M.V. Kryvoshlykov (it was this unwritten story he probably wanted to give the name "Don region", which many researchers mistakenly took for the original title of the novel "Quiet Don"). Gradually Sholokhov comes to the conclusion that "it is not a story that needs to be written, but a novel with a broad display of the world war, then it will become clear what united the front-line Cossacks with the front-line soldiers." Only when the writer managed to collect numerous memoirs of the participants of the First World War and rich archival material, he began work on the novel, which was named "Quiet Don".
“The work on collecting materials for“ Quiet Don ”, - said Sholokhov, - went in two directions: firstly, collecting memories, stories, facts, details from living participants in the imperialist and Civil War, conversations, inquiries, checking all plans and ideas ; secondly, a painstaking study of specially military literature, the development of military operations, numerous memoirs. Acquaintance with foreign, even White Guard sources ”.
The earliest manuscript of the novel dates back to the fall of 1925 and tells about the events of the summer of 1917, associated with the participation of the Cossacks in Kornilov's campaign against Petrograd. “I wrote 5-6 printed sheets. When I wrote, I felt that it was not right, - Sholokhov later said. - The reader will not understand why the Cossacks took part in suppressing the revolution. What are these Cossacks? What is the Don Army Region? Isn't it a kind of terra incognito for the readers? So I quit the job I started. I began to think about a broader novel. When the plan matured, I began collecting material. Knowledge of the Cossack way of life helped ”. The chapters on the Kornilovism, written by this time, later became the plot basis for the second volume of the novel. “I started anew and started from the Cossack days, from the years that preceded the First World War. He wrote three parts of the novel, which constitute the first volume of The Quiet Don. And when the first volume was finished, and it was necessary to write further - Petrograd, Kornilovism - I returned to the old manuscript and used it for the second volume. It was a pity to quit the work already done. " However, before the writer returned to work on the novel, almost a year passed, filled with both sad (father's death at the end of 1925) and joyful events.
In 1925, the publishing house "New Moscow" published a separate book "Don Stories". In 1926, a second collection of stories appeared - "Azure Steppe" (in 1931 Sholokhov's early stories will be published in one book "Azure Steppe. Don Stories"). In February 1926, a daughter, Svetlana, was born to the Sholokhovs.
At this time, the thoughts of the writer are associated with "Quiet Don". One of the few evidences of his work on the novel during this period is a letter to Kharlampy Vasilyevich Ermakov dated April 6, 1926: “Dear comrade. Ermakov! I need to receive additional information from you regarding the era of 1919. I hope that you will not refuse to give me the courtesy to provide this information upon my arrival from Moscow. I suppose to be at your house in May - June this year. This information concerns the little things of the V-Donskoy uprising. " Donskoy Kharlampy Ermakov became one of the prototypes of Grigory Melekhov (in the earliest manuscript of the novel, the hero is named Abram Ermakov).
In the fall, Sholokhov and his family moved to Veshenskaya, where he plunged into work on the novel. The first lines of the first volume were written on November 8, 1926. The work on the book was surprisingly intense. Having finished the draft of the first part, Sholokhov began work on the second already in November. By the end of the summer work on the first volume was completed, and in the fall Sholokhov took the manuscript to Moscow, to the October magazine and the Moscow Writer publishing house. In the magazine the novel was recognized as "everyday writing" and devoid of political acuteness, but thanks to the active intervention of A. Serafimovich, it was already in the first four issues of 1928 that the first book of the novel was published. And in 5-10 issues for the same year - and the second book of "Quiet Don". In the same 1928, the first book of the novel was first published in Roman-Gazeta, then as a separate publication in Moskovsky Rabochy. The manuscript of the novel, not yet published in Oktyabr, was recommended for publication by the head of the publishing department, Evgenia Grigorievna Levitskaya. There, in the publishing house, in 1927, twenty-two-year-old Sholokhov met with Levitskaya, who was a quarter of a century older than him. This meeting was destined to be the beginning of a strong friendship. Levitskaya helped Sholokhov more than once in difficult moments of his life. Sholokhov took an active part in her fate and the fate of her loved ones. In 1956, Sholokhov's story "The Fate of a Man" will be published with a dedication: "Evgenia Grigorievna Levitskaya, a member of the CPSU since 1903".
And the difficult days began for Sholokhov immediately after the publication of the first volume of the novel. E. G. Levitskaya writes about this in her notes: “T. D. " first appeared in the magazine. October, and then came out at the end of 1928 as a separate book ... My God, what an orgy of slander and fabrications about The Quiet Don and its author has risen! With serious faces, mysteriously lowering their voices, people seemed to be quite "decent" - writers, critics, not to mention the philistine public, passed on "reliable" stories: Sholokhov, they say, stole the manuscript from some white officer - the officer's mother, according to one version, it came to the gas. Pravda, or the Central Committee, or the RAPP and asked for the protection of the rights of her son, who wrote such a wonderful book ... At all literary crossings, the author of The Quiet Don was slandered and slandered. Poor author, who in 1928 was barely 23 years old! How much courage was needed, how much confidence in your strength and in your writing talent to endure all the vulgarity, all the malicious advice and "friendly" instructions of "venerable" writers. I once got to one such "venerable" writer - it turned out to be Berezovsky, who thoughtfully uttered: "I am an old writer, but I could not write a book like" Quiet Don "... Is it possible to believe that at 23, not having no education, a person could write such a deep, such psychologically truthful book ...
Already during the publication of the first two books of The Quiet Don, numerous responses to the novel appeared in print. Moreover, judgments about him were often the most opposite. The Rostov magazine Na Rise in 1928 called the novel "a whole event in literature". A. Lunacharsky wrote in 1929: "Quiet Don" is a work of exceptional power in terms of the breadth of pictures, knowledge of life and people, and the bitterness of its plot ... This work resembles the best phenomena of Russian literature of all times. " In one of his private letters from 1928, Gorky said: “Sholokhov, judging by the first volume, is talented ... Every year he nominates more and more talented people. This is joy. Russia is very, anathemically talented ”. However, most often positive reviews about the novel were based on the beliefs of critics about the inevitability of the main character's coming to the Bolshevik faith. V. Ermilov, for example, wrote: “Sholokhov looks through the eyes of Melekhov - a man gradually moving towards Bolshevism. The author himself has already done this way ... ”. But there were also attacks on the novel. According to the critic M. Maisel, Sholokhov "very often, as it were, admires all this kulak satiety, prosperity, lovingly and sometimes with frank admiration describes the earnestness and inviolability of the strong peasant order with its ritualism, greed, greed and other inevitable accessories of inert peasant life." As you can see, the controversy surrounding the novel that arose immediately after the first publications were primarily of an ideological nature.
An extremely difficult fate awaited the third book of the novel. Although in December 1928 the Rostov newspaper "Molot" published an excerpt from it, and from January 1929 the publication of the book was published in the magazine "October" (No. 1 - 3), in April the writer was forced to suspend its printing. From spring to August 29th, Sholokhov hardly finds time to study literature, completely immersed in the harsh worries of the first year of collectivization.
In August, the Siberian magazine "Nastoyaschee" publishes an article "Why did the White Guards like" Quiet Don "? “The task of which class did the proletarian writer Sholokhov fulfill the task of obscuring the class struggle in the pre-revolutionary village? The answer to this question must be given with all clarity and certainty. Having the best subjective intentions, Sholokhov objectively fulfilled the task of the fist. ... As a result, Sholokhov's thing became acceptable even for the White Guards. "
In the same summer of 1929, another assessment of the novel was made. On July 9, in a letter to the old revolutionary Felix Kohn, Stalin wrote: “The famous writer of our time, Comrade Sholokhov made in his "Quiet Don" a number of gross mistakes and downright incorrect information about Syrtsov, Podtelkov, Krivoshlykov and others, but does it follow from this that "Quiet Don" is a worthless thing deserving withdrawal from sale? " True, this letter was published only in 1949 in the 12th volume of the collected works of Stalin, and until that time, apparently, Sholokhov did not know.
Only in the winter of 1930 did Sholokhov bring the manuscript of the sixth part of The Quiet Don to Moscow, leaving it for reading and for deciding its fate in the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers. At the end of March, Veshenskaya received an answer from Fadeev, who then became one of the leaders of the RAPP and the head of the October magazine. “Fadeev suggests that I make such changes that are unacceptable for me in any way,” Sholokhov says in a letter to Levitskaya. - He says, if I don't make Gregory mine, the novel cannot be published. And you know how I thought of the end of book III. I cannot make Gregory the final Bolshevik. ” Not only the image of the protagonist of the novel is sharply criticized by RAAP. They did not miss the press, for example, the old man-Old Believer’s story in chapter XXXIX of the sixth part about the arbitrariness of Commissioner Malkin in the village of Bukanovka (Malkin was alive and in a responsible post in 1930). The most seditious, from the point of view of those on whom the fate of the book depended, was the image of the Veshensky uprising, an event traditionally hushed up in the official Soviet press (until the 70s, Sholokhov's novel was practically the only book about this event). The most orthodox Rapp leaders considered that the writer, citing facts of infringement of the Cossacks of the Upper Don, justified the uprising. In a letter to Gorky dated July 6, 1931, Sholokhov explains the causes of the uprising by the excesses that were made by the representatives of the Soviet government against the middle Cossack, and reports that in his novel he deliberately missed the most severe reprisals against the Cossacks, which were a direct impetus for the uprising ...
In 1930, there was talk of plagiarism again in literary circles. The reason for them was the book Requiem. In memory of L. Andreev ", where, in particular, there was a letter dated September 3, 1917, in which Leonid Andreev informs the writer Sergei Goloushev that, as the editor of the newspaper" Russkaya Volya ", he rejected his" Quiet Don ". And although it was about travel notes and everyday essays "From the Quiet Don", which, having received Andreev's refusal, S. Goloushev published in the newspaper "Narodny Vestnik" all in the same September 1917 under the pseudonym Sergei Glagol, disputes over the authorship of the Cossack epic flared up with renewed vigor. In those days, Sholokhov wrote to Serafimovich: “... there are rumors again that I stole the Tikhiy Don from the critic S. Goloushev, a friend of L. Andreev, and that there is undeniable evidence for this in the requiem book written by his relatives ... One of these days I receive this book and a letter from E. G. Levitskaya. There really is a place in Andreev's letter to S. Goloushev, where he says that he rejected "Quiet Don". Goloushev, “to my grief and misfortune”, called “Quiet Don” his travel notes and essays, where the main attention (judging by the letter) is given to the political mood of the Don in 1917. The names of Kornilov and Kaledin are often mentioned. This gave an occasion to my “friends” to raise a new campaign of slander against me. What should I do, Alexander Serafimovich? I'm really tired of being a "thief."
The need to stand up for fellow countrymen who became victims of collectivization, criticism from the RAPP, a new wave of accusations of plagiarism - all this did not encourage creative work. And although already at the beginning of August 1930, when asked about the end of The Quiet Don, Sholokhov answered: “I have only the rump,” she intended to bring the seventh part to Moscow at the end of the month, these plans were not destined to come true. Moreover, at this time he was carried away by a new plan.
The events of the day were overshadowed for a while by the era of the Civil War, and Sholokhov had a desire to write "a tale of ten sheets ... from collective farm life." In 1930, work began on the first book of the novel “With sweat and blood”, later called “Virgin Soil Upturned”.
In the autumn of the same year, Sholokhov, together with A. Vesely and V. Kudashev, left for Sorrento to meet with Gorky, however, after a three-week “sitting” in Berlin, awaiting a visa from the Mussolini government, the writer returned to his homeland: “It was interesting to see what was being done now at home, on the Don. ” Since the end of 1930, in the spring of 1932, Sholokhov has been working intensively on Raised Virgin Soil and Silent Don, finally being inclined to the idea that the third book of Silent Don will comprise the sixth part entirely, which will include the former - the sixth and seventh . In April 1931, the writer met with Gorky, who had returned to his homeland, and handed him the manuscript of the sixth part of The Quiet Don. In a letter to Fadeev, Gorky spoke in favor of publishing the book, although, in his opinion, “it has several pleasant minutes for the emigrant Cossacks.” At Sholokhov's request, Gorky, having read the manuscript, handed it over to Stalin. In July 1931, at Gorky's dacha, Sholokhov met with Stalin. Despite the fact that Stalin was clearly not satisfied with many of the pages of the novel (for example, the excessively “soft” description of General Kornilov), at the end of the conversation he firmly said: “We will publish the third book of The Quiet Don!”
The October editorial office promised to resume publication of the novel from the November issue of the magazine, however, some members of the editorial board resolutely protested against printing, and the sixth part of the novel went to the Central Committee's cultural propagation. New chapters began to appear only in November 1932, but the editors made such significant bills in them that Sholokhov himself demanded that printing be suspended. In the double issue of the magazine, the editorial board was forced to publish the fragments removed from the chapters that had already been published, accompanying their publication with a very unconvincing explanation: “For technical reasons (the set is scattered) from Nos. 1 and 2 in the novel“ Quiet Don ”by M. Sholokhov ... pieces fell out ... »The publication of the third book resumed from the seventh issue and ended in the tenth. The first separate edition of the third book of The Quiet Don was published at the end of February 1933 by the State Publishing House of Fiction. Preparing the book for publication, Sholokhov restored all the fragments rejected by the magazine "October".
In 1931, directors I. Pravov and O. Preobrazhensky shot a feature film based on the novel "Quiet Don" with a magnificent acting duet: A. Abrikosov (Grigory) and E. Tsesarskaya (Aksinya). However, the film did not immediately reach the viewer, accused, like the novel, of "admiring the Cossack way of life", of portraying "Cossack adultery."
From January to September 1932, in parallel with the release of The Quiet Don, the first Virgin Soil Upturned was published in the Novy Mir magazine. And again the author met with serious resistance from the editorial board, which demanded that the chapters on dispossession be removed. And Sholokhov once again resorted to the help of Stalin, who, having read the manuscript, gave the instruction: "The novel must be published."
In 1932, Sholokhov joined the CPSU (b). the work begun on the second book of Virgin Soil Upturned had to be temporarily postponed in order to complete the fourth book of The Quiet Don. However, life again violated the writer's creative plans - the terrible "famine" of 1933 came. Sholokhov sought to do everything to help his fellow countrymen survive. Realizing. That the local leadership cannot cope with the impending catastrophe of hunger, Sholokhov turns to Stalin with a letter in which he paints a terrifying picture on fifteen pages: “T. Stalin! Veshensky district, along with many other districts of the North Caucasus Territory, did not fulfill the grain procurement plan and did not fill up seeds. In this area, as in other areas, collective farmers and individual farmers are now dying of hunger; adults and children swell and eat everything that a person is not supposed to eat, starting from carrion and ending with oak bark and all kinds of swamp roots. ” The writer gives examples of criminal actions by the authorities, who squeezed “surplus” bread from hungry peasants: “On the Grachevsky collective farm, an authorized representative of the Republic of Kazakhstan hung up collective farmers by the neck to the ceiling, continued to interrogate half-strangled them, then led them to the river on a belt, kicked them on the way, put them on the road on the ice on my knees and continued interrogation. " There are many similar examples in the letter. Sholokhov also cites figures: “Of the 50,000 population, no less than 49,000 are starving. For these 49,000, we received 22,000 poods. This is for three months. "
Stalin, whose directives were so zealously executed by local grain procurers, nevertheless did not fail to respond to the letter of the 28-year-old writer: “Your letter was received on the fifteenth. Thanks for your message. We will do whatever is required. Name a number. Stalin. 16. IV. 33 g. " Encouraged by the fact that his letter did not go unnoticed, Sholokhov wrote to Stalin again and not only gave the figure by which he estimated the need for bread in the Veshensky and Verkhne-Don districts, but also continues to open the leader's eyes to the tyranny of the collective farms and its culprits whom I saw not only among the grassroots leadership. Stalin replies with a telegram, in which he says that in addition to the recently released forty thousand poods of rye, the oysters will receive an additional eighty thousand poods, the Verkhne-Don region will receive forty thousand. However, in a letter written later to Sholokhov, the "leader" would reproach the writer for a one-sided understanding of events, that he sees only victims in the farmers and ignores the facts of sabotage on their part.
Only after the hardest year of 1933 did Sholokhov finally have the opportunity to finish the fourth book of The Quiet Don. The seventh part of the novel was published in Novy Mir in late 1937 - early 1938, the eighth, final, appeared in the second and third issues of Novy Mir in 1940. The following year, the novel first came out in a completely separate edition. By this time, the author had already been elected a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (1937) and a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1939).
The position taken by Sholokhov in the 30s testifies to the civic courage of the writer. In 1937, he defended the leaders of the Veshensky district who were detained at the Lubyanka, turned to Stalin, and achieved a meeting with the arrested secretary of the district committee, Pyotr Lugovoy. Sholokhov's efforts were not in vain: the district leaders were released and reinstated in their posts. In 1938, he stood up for the arrested I. T. Kleimenov, son-in-law of Levitskaya, a former employee of the Soviet trade mission in Berlin, a specialist in rocket technology, one of the creators of the legendary Katyusha. The writer personally met with Beria, but by the time they met, Kleimenov was already shot. In 1955, M. Sholokhov sent a letter to the Party Control Commission under the CPSU Central Committee, in which he pointed out the need to rehabilitate Kleimenov. Through the efforts of Sholokhov, the wife of Kleimenov, the daughter of Levitskaya, Margarita Konstantinovna, was released from prison. Sholokhov also stood up for the son of the writer A. Platonov and the son of Anna Akhmatova, Lev Gumilyov, who were in the camp, contributed to the publication of the collection by Akhmatova herself (it came out in 1940 after the poet's forced silence for eighteen years) and offered to nominate him for the Stalin Prize established at that time. And all this despite the fact that clouds were constantly gathering over him. Back in 1931, G. Yagoda, omnipotent at that time, at the time of Gorky’s apartment, told the writer: “Misha, you’re still a contrik! Your "Quiet Don" is closer to white than to us! " 
Judging by the anonymous letters received by the secretary of the district committee P.Lugovs by Sholokhov himself, in 1938 local security officers tried to force the people arrested by them to testify against Sholokhov. The leaders of the Rostov NKVD instructed the secretary of the party organization of the Novocherkassk Industrial Institute, Ivan Pogorelov, to expose Sholokhov as the enemy preparing the uprising of the Don, Kuban and Terek Cossacks against the Soviet regime. An honest man, in the past a fearless scout, Pogorelov decided to save Sholokhov and informed him and Lugovoy about the assignment given to him. On the advice of Pogorelov, Sholokhov went to Moscow to see Stalin. Pogorelov himself arrived there secretly. In Stalin’s office, in the presence of his patrons from the Rostov NKVD, he exposed them, presenting as a material evidence a note with the address of a safe house, written by the hand of one of the Rostov security officers. In such a difficult situation, balancing between freedom and the threat of physical destruction, Sholokhov had to work on the last book of The Quiet Don.
After the final chapters of the Cossack epic were published, the author was nominated for the Stalin Prize. In November 1940, a discussion of the novel took place in the Committee on Stalin Prizes. “All of us,” Alexander Fadeev said at the time, “are offended by the end of the work in the best Soviet feelings. Because they waited for the end for 14 years: and Sholokhov led his beloved hero to moral devastation. " He was echoed by film director Alexander Dovzhenko: "I AMi read the book “Quiet Don” with a feeling of deep inner dissatisfaction ... The impressions are summarized as follows: Quiet Don lived for centuries, Cossacks and Cossacks lived, rode horses, drank, sang ... there was some kind of juicy, odorous, settled, warm life ... The revolution came, the Soviet regime, the Bolsheviks - they ruined the quiet Don, dispersed, set brother against brother, son against father, husband against wife, brought the country to poverty ... infected with gonorrhea, syphilis, sowed dirt, anger, drove strong, temperamental people into bandits ... and that was the end of it. This is a huge mistake in the author's intention. " “The book“ Quiet Don ”has caused both delight and grief among the readers, - said Alexey Tolstoy. - The end of "Quiet Don" - a plan or a mistake? I think that a mistake ... Gregory should not leave literature as a bandit. This is not true in relation to the people and to the revolution " 1 ... Despite the negative reviews of authoritative cultural figures, in March 1941 Sholokhov was awarded the Stalin Prize of the 1st degree for the novel "Quiet Don". On the second day of the Great Patriotic War, the writer transferred his prize to the Defense Fund.
In July 1941, Sholokhov, the regimental commissar of the reserve, was drafted into the army, sent to the front, worked in the Sovinformburo, was a special correspondent for Pravda and Krasnaya Zvezda, participated in the battles near Smolensk on the Western Front, near Rostov on the Southern Front. In January 1942, he received a serious concussion during an unsuccessful plane landing at the airfield in Kuibyshev, which made itself felt throughout his life.
In the spring of 1942, Sholokhov's story "The Science of Hatred" appeared, in which the writer created the image of a hero who had been in captivity, despite the fact that on August 16, 1941, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief's Headquarters issued order No. 270, which equated prisoners with traitors.
On July 6, Sholokhov arrived at Veshenskaya, and two days later, German aircraft raided the village. One of the bombs fell into the courtyard of the Sholokhov house, and his mother died in front of the writer. Sholokhov deposited his home archive in the fall of 1941 with the NKVD district department so that it could be taken out together with the department’s documents if necessary, however, when in 1942 the German troops quickly went to the Don, local organizations were hastily evacuated, and the writer’s archive, including the manuscript of The Quiet Don and the not yet printed second book of Virgin Land Upturned, was lost. Only one folder of the Cossack epic manuscripts was preserved and returned to the writer by the commander of the tank brigade defending Veshenskaya.
The work of the writer during the terrible war years was appreciated by the Soviet government: in September 1945, the writer was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree.
Already during the war, when little prose prevailed in literature, promptly responding to the rapidly changing situation in the country, Sholokhov began work on a novel in which he intended to give a wide coverage of military events. In 1943-1944, in Pravda and Red Star, the first chapters of this novel, called "They Fought for the Homeland," are printed. After the war, in 1949, Sholokhov published its sequel.
In the same year, volume 12 of Stalin's collected works was published, in which the aforementioned letter to F. Cohn was first published, where it was said about the gross mistakes made by the author of The Quiet Don. The publication of this document could at that time be regarded by editors as a ban on reprinting the novel. Sholokhov turned to Stalin with a letter in which he asked to explain what these mistakes were. There was no reply to the letter. After a long wait, Sholokhov asked Stalin for a personal meeting. This meeting was postponed several times, and when at last they sent a car for Sholokhov to take him to the Kremlin, the writer ordered the driver to call at the Grand Hotel, where he ordered dinner. To a reminder that Stalin was waiting for him, Sholokhov replied that he had waited longer and did not go to the meeting. Since then, relations with Stalin were interrupted, and in Moscow until the death of the leader, Sholokhov no longer appeared.
And although The Quiet Flows the Don continued to be published, it was apparently Stalin’s reference to Sholokhov’s “gross errors” that allowed the editor of the Goslitizdat K. Potapov to subject the novel to unprecedented censorship editing. In the 1953 edition, whole fragments disappeared from the novel without a trace, concerning, for example, the ideological judgments of Bunchuk and Listnitsky, the image of General Kornilov, Shtokman, the relationship between Bunchuk and Anna Pogudko, characteristics of the Volunteer Army being created in Rostov, etc. In addition to banknotes, editor he allowed himself to distort the author's language, replacing the colorful Sholokhov dialectisms with neutral common words, and even made his own additions to the text of the novel, including mentions of Stalin1.
In the summer of 1950, Sholokhov completed the first book of the novel "They Fought for their Homeland" and set to work on the second. According to the writer, the novel was to consist of three books. The first was supposed to be devoted to pre-war life, the second and third to the events of the war. “I started the novel in the middle. Now he already has a torso. Now I am planting the head and legs on the body, ”2 the author wrote in 1965. To create a large-scale work about the war, personal front-line impressions and memories of close people were certainly not enough, so Sholokhov turned to the General Staff with a request to allow him to work in the archives. The semi-official refused his request in July 1950, he turned to G. M. Malenkov for help, but he had to wait eight months for a response from Him. This unwillingness of the authorities to help the artist was one of the reasons why the work on the novel was delayed. Only in 1954 were new chapters of the novel about the war completed and appeared in print.
In 1954, the oldest Russian writer S. Sergeev-Tsensky received an offer from the Nobel Committee to nominate a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. In agreement with the leadership of the Writers' Union and the secretariat of the Central Committee of the party, Sergeev-Tsensky proposed the candidacy of Sholokhov. However, due to the length of the approvals, this proposal came with a delay, and the committee was forced to refuse to consider Sholokhov's candidacy.
On New Year's Eve - December 31, 1956 and January 1, 1957 - Pravda published the story "The Fate of a Man", in which the main character was a captured Soviet soldier. And although Sholokhov did not dare to say about what awaited the prisoners of war at home during the war, the very choice of the hero became an act of civic courage.
Since 1951, almost anew, Sholokhov recreates the second book of Virgin Soil Upturned. December 26, 1959, he called the chief editor of the magazine "Moscow" E. Popovkin and said: "Well, put an end ... Work thirty years! I feel very lonely. Orphaned somehow "1. The second book of Virgin Soil Upturned was published in 1960. For this novel, Sholokhov was awarded the Lenin Prize.
1 A word about Sholokhov. S. 406.
In the late 50s - early 60s, Sholokhov's work attracted close attention of filmmakers. In 1957-1958, the director S. Gerasimov made the film "Quiet Don" with a brilliant acting ensemble. In 1960-1961 A. G. Ivanov filmed "Virgin Land Upturned". The film The Fate of a Man (1959), which received the main prize of the Moscow International Film Festival, the Lenin Prize, and made a triumphant march across the screens of many countries of the world, had a special audience success. This film was the directorial debut of S. Bondarchuk, who played a major role in it. Bondarchuk once again turned to Sholokhov's prose. In 1975 he filmed the novel They Fought for the Motherland, and just before his death, he completed the filming of a new film version of The Quiet Don.
In 1965, Sholokhov received official international recognition: he was awarded the Nobel Prize for the novel "Quiet Don".
As for Sholokhov’s civil position, in the post-war decades it has become extremely controversial and is increasingly moving away from the position of the author of The Quiet Don.
Sholokhov listened with interest and genuine attention to AT Tvardovsky's poem "Terkin in the Next World", rejected in 1954 by the party censorship, and at the same time in no way recognized the political program of the "New World" magazine, which Tvardovsky directed in that time. Sholokhov contributed to the publication of A. Solzhenitsyn’s short story “One Day of Ivan Denisovich,” but until the end of his life he did not accept the Solzhenitsyn concept of history and his assessment of the Soviet regime. Sholokhov “broke through” the publication of a collection of Russian fairy tales collected and processed by Andrei Platonov, who was in severe disgrace, putting his name on the book as an editor, and in those same years, in fact, took part in the campaign against the “cosmopolitans”, supporting the article by M. Bubennov "Do we need literary pseudonyms now?" (1951) in his article “With the visor down,” which K. Simonov called “unprecedented in rudeness”. In an interview with a French journalist, Sholokhov unexpectedly stated to many: “It was necessary to publish Pasternak’s book“ Doctor Zhivago ”in the Soviet Union, instead of banning it,” and at the same time he spoke without respect with respect to the novel itself.
In September 1965, the KGB arrested the writers Yu. Daniel and A. Sinyavsky, accusing them of anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda, the dissemination of anti-Soviet literature. The whole world community was concerned about this fact. Numerous letters in defense of illegally persecuted writers were sent to the Writers' Union, the Soviet government, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, and newspapers. Many cultural figures turned to Sholokhov, who had just been awarded the Nobel Prize and who, in the opinion of the world community, had high authority both among readers and the Soviet authorities. One of the first to address Sholokhov in November 1965 was the Nobel laureate François Mauriac: "If there is a partnership for the Nobel Prize, I beg my famous brother Sholokhov to convey our request to those on whom the release of Andrei Sinyavsky and Julius Daniel depends." Then followed telegrams from cultural figures of Italy (15 signatures), Mexico (35 signatures), Chile (7 signatures). The petition campaign was at its peak by the time of the award ceremony, which took place on December 10, 1965 in Stockholm. But neither in the press nor at the ceremony did Sholokhov respond in any way to the appeals he received.
In February 1966, a trial took place, which sentenced Sinyavsky to seven, and Daniel to five years in a maximum security colony. On the eve of the 23rd Party Congress, sixty-two writers appealed to the Presidium of the Congress, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR with a letter in which, interceding for already convicted fellow writers, they offered to bail them. There is no Sholokhov surname among those who signed the letter. But at the congress itself, Sholokhov made a speech in which, in particular, he said: “I am ashamed of those who slandered the Motherland and threw mud at everything that was most bright for us. They are immoral. I am ashamed of those who tried and are trying to take them under protection, no matter what the motivation for this defense. I am doubly ashamed of those who offer their services and ask to give them bail convicted renegades.<...> Had these young fellows with a black conscience caught in the memorable twenties, when they were judged, not relying on strictly delimited articles of the Criminal Code, but guided by revolutionary legal consciousness, "oh, these werewolves would have received the wrong measure of punishment! And here, you see, they still talk about the “severity” of the sentence. ”2
The writer's speech caused shock among the Soviet intelligentsia. Lydia Korneevna Chukovskaya addressed him with an angry open letter. “The writers' business,” she wrote, “is not to persecute, but to intervene ... This is what the great Russian literature in the person of its best representatives teaches us. This is what tradition you violated by loudly regretting that the court's verdict was not severe enough! The writer, like any Soviet citizen, can and should be tried by a criminal court for any misconduct - not just for his books. Literature is not subject to criminal court jurisdiction. Ideas should be opposed to ideas, not prisons and camps. This is what you should have told your listeners if you, in fact, would have gone up to the podium as a representative of Soviet literature. But you kept the speech as an apostate of her ... And literature itself will take revenge on you and itself ... It will sentence you to the highest punishment that exists for an artist - to creative sterility ”3 (May 25, 1966).
In 1969, Sholokhov transferred to Pravda chapters from the novel "They Fought for the Homeland." The editor-in-chief of the newspaper M. Zimyanin did not dare to independently publish them, as they contained criticism of Stalin. And the manuscript was handed over to Brezhnev. After waiting for a decision for more than three weeks, Sholokhov himself sent a letter to the Secretary General, in which he asked to consider the issue of printing new chapters. However, the writer did not wait for an answer or a personal meeting with Brezhnev. And suddenly Pravda published chapters, without the author's knowledge having blotted out everything that related to Stalin's terror1. Probably, after this, Sholokhov realized that he could not tell the truth about the war that he knew. According to the writer's daughter, Sholokhov burned the manuscripts of the unpublished chapters of the novel. The writer did not turn to fiction any more, although fate measured out fifteen more years of his life. However, the insult inflicted by Pravda is hardly the only reason. Sholokhov himself was aware of the creative crisis that had struck him in recent decades. Back in 1954, speaking at the Second Congress of Soviet Writers, he said: “The term“ leader ”as applied to a person who really leads someone is a good term in itself, but in life it happens that there was a writer and now he is no longer leading, but standing. Yes, and it costs not a month, not a year, but some ten years, or even more — let’s say, like your humble servant and similar ones ”2. M.A.Sholokhov died on February 24, 1984. During the life of Sholokhov, in the 70s, a new wave of accusations of the writer of plagiarism arose. Only now it has taken not the form of rumors, but the form of a scientific discussion.
In 1974, the Paris publishing house YMCA-press published an unfinished study due to the death of the author "The Stirrup of the Quiet Don" (Riddles of the Novel) ", signed with the pseudonym D * (only in 1990). The first edition of the restored text of the novel was carried out on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Victory; it became known that the author of this work was the famous literary critic I.N. Medvedeva-Tomashevskaya). The book was published with a preface by A. I. Solzhenitsyn, in which there were also such words: “An unprecedented case in world literature appeared before the reading public. The 23-year-old debutant has created a work on material that far surpasses his life experience and his level of education (4-grade).<...> The author described with vividness and knowledge the world war that he hadn’t been in at his ten-year-old age, and the Civil War ended when he was 14 years old. The book succeeded with such artistic power that is attainable only after many trials by an experienced master, but the best 1st volume, begun in 1926, was submitted ready to the editor in 1927; a year later, after the 1st, the magnificent 2nd was ready; and even less than a year after the 2nd, the 3rd was filed, and only the proletarian censorship delayed this stunning move. Then an incomparable genius? But the subsequent A 5-year life was never confirmed and repeated neither this height nor this pace. "
Relying on the analysis of the text, the author of "Stremen" comes to the conclusion that there are "two completely different, but coexisting copyright principles" in the novel. A true author, according to the researcher, is characterized by the manifestation of "high humanism and love for the people, which are characteristic of the Russian intelligentsia and Russian literature in the years of 1910" 2. It is characterized by a language that organically combines the Don folk dialect with the intellectual speech of the writer. The work of the “co-author” consisted primarily in editing the author's text in accordance with ideological guidelines that completely contradict the author's. The language of the "co-author" is distinguished by "poverty and even helplessness." D * names in his work the name of the "true author" of the novel. She, in her opinion, is the Cossack writer Fyodor Dmitrievich Kryukov (1870-1920), whose manuscript was transferred to S. Goloushev and is mentioned in L. Andreev's letter. A. Solzhenitsyn, publisher of The Quiet Don's Strength, agrees with this version. Hypothesis D * was also supported by R. A. Medvedev, who published in 1975 abroad in French the book "Who Wrote" The Quiet Don "?", And later in English its updated version of "The riddles of Sholokhov's literary biography." Since these works were not published in the Soviet Union, although they were well known in certain circles, there was no serious refutation of the arguments put forward in the Soviet press, and attempts to defend Sholokhov’s authorship without entering into an open discussion, let alone silence the problem, not only did not lead to the writer’s excuse, but, on the contrary, often raised doubts even in those readers who were not inclined to deny Sholokhov’s authorship. The attitude to the problem abroad was different. The American Slavist G. Ermolaev carried out a thorough comparative analysis of the text of The Quiet Don with the texts of Sholokhov and Kryukov and came to the conclusion that Sholokhov can be considered the author of the novel with great reason. A group of Norwegian scientists under the leadership of G. Hietso attracted computer technology and methods of mathematical linguistics to solve the problem. Using a quantitative analysis, the researchers tested the authorship hypothesis of Kryukov and came to conclusions that refute it. On the contrary, their analysis confirmed that “Sholokhov writes strikingly similar to the author of“ Quiet Don ”.
A new round of discussion began after the death of Sholokhov in the 80s and 90s. Among the most significant works of this period should be called a study published in Israel 3. Bar-Sella "Quiet Don" against Sholokhov "(1988-1994). The author, after conducting a thorough study of the text of the novel, its stylistics, discovered numerous errors and inaccuracies, and also named a number of little-known claimants for authorship of The Quiet Don and announced its discovery of a new name for the author. In the published parts of the study, his name has not yet been named, but Bar-Sella gives some information about him: “a Don Cossack by origin, studied at Moscow Imperial University, the author of two books (except for the Quiet Don), shot in red in January 1920 in the city of Rostov-on-Don. At the time of his death, he was not yet thirty years old. ”1 In 1993, the magazine Novy Mir published an extensive work by A. G. and S. E. Makarov2. Without setting a goal to name a specific author of the novel, the researchers, using rigorous analysis, reveal the existence of two different author’s editions of the source text of The Quiet Don and their mechanical, compilation unification by the “co-author” of the text in the absence of a visible understanding by him (“co-author”) of the fundamental discrepancies and internal contradictions.
The most important argument against Sholokhov as the author of The Quiet Don in recent years has been the lack of archives, drafts and manuscripts of the novel. However, as it turned out, drafts of the first book of the novel survived. They were found by journalist Lev Komm, as he reported in his publications in the early 90s. In 1995, his book "Who Wrote" And Quiet Don ": Chronicle of a Search" was published in Moscow, and in which the manuscripts were published and commented, the author's revisions of parts of the novel were reproduced. The appearance in print of the manuscripts dated and edited by the writer himself became a serious argument in favor of Sholokhov's authorship. However, not being sure that "uninvited guests - collectors, literary scholars, robbers, etc., will not come to the archive keepers," Kolodny did not indicate in whose hands these manuscripts are.
At the end of 1999, on the eve of Sholokhov's jubilee (2000 is the 95th anniversary of his birth), there were reports in the media that the manuscripts of The Quiet Don, which, as it turned out, had been kept in Vasily's family for all these years Kudashev, a close friend of the writer who died during the Great Patriotic War, was discovered by employees of the Institute of World Literature. Gorky, who searched independently of L. Kolodny. In an interview with the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, the director of the institute, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences FF Kuznetsov said the following: “The most important thing for us was to determine how seriously what the custodians of manuscripts possess. When they agreed on an acceptable price for us and for them, a photocopier was filmed with their consent. Sensation! You will not find another word. 855 handwritten pages - most of them by Sholokhov's hand, the other by the hand of Maria Petrovna, the writer's wife (then the Sholokhovs did not have a typewriter yet) Of these, more than five hundred pages - drafts, variants, phrases crossed up and down in search of the desired word - in short, living evidence of the author's thought, creative searches ”1.
It is difficult to say whether the introduction of these manuscripts into scientific circulation will put an end to the protracted debate. But one thing is already clear today: great books have the ability to live their own lives, independent of their creators and critics. Time has confirmed that this is the fate of the best works of Mikhail Sholokhov.
1punishment
2The price of a metaphor, or Crime andpunishment
(1905-1984) soviet writer
Mikhail Sholokhov is a famous Soviet prose writer, author of many short stories, novellas and novels about the life of the Don Cossacks. For the scale and artistic power of works describing the life of Cossack villages in a difficult turning point, the writer was awarded the Nobel Prize. The creative achievements of Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov were highly appreciated in his own country. He twice received the title of Hero of Socialist Labor, became a laureate of the most significant Stalin and Lenin prizes in the Soviet Union.
Childhood and youth
Mikhail Sholokhov's father was a prosperous merchant's son, he bought livestock, rented land from the Cossacks and grew wheat, at one time he was the manager of a steam mill. The mother of a writer from former serfs. In her youth, she served on the estate of the landowner Popova and was married against her will. After a while, the young woman leaves her husband, who has never become a native, and leaves for Alexander Sholokhov.
In 1905, Mikhail was born. An illegitimate boy is recorded in the name of the official husband of the mother. This famous fact of the biography of Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov had a great influence on the future writer, developing a heightened sense of justice and a desire to always get to the bottom of the truth. In many works of the author, echoes of personal tragedy can be found.
The surname of his real father, M.A.Sholokhov received only after the wedding of his parents in 1912. Two years earlier, the family left for the village of Karginskaya. The biography of this period contains brief data on Sholokhov's primary education. At first, a local teacher regularly taught the boy. After the preparatory course, Mikhail continued his studies at the gymnasium of Boguchar and completed 4 classes. Classes had to be left after the arrival of German soldiers in the city.
1920-1923 years
This period is quite difficult not only for the country, but also for the future writer. Some of the events that took place in the life of Sholokhov in these years are not mentioned by any brief biography.
At the new place of residence, the young man receives the position of a clerk, and then a tax inspector. In 1922, he was arrested for abuse of power and almost immediately sentenced to death. Mikhail Sholokhov was saved by his father's intervention. He made a rather large amount as collateral and brought to the court a new birth certificate, the age of his son in which was reduced by more than 2 years. As a minor, the young man was sentenced to correctional labor for one year and sent to the Moscow Region under escort. To the colony of M.A. Sholokhov never got to, subsequently settling in Moscow. From this moment, a new stage begins in the biography of Sholokhov.
The beginning of the creative path
The first attempts to publish his early works fell on a short period of residence in Moscow. Sholokhov’s biography contains brief information about the life of the writer at this time. It is known that he sought to continue the engagement, but due to the lack of the necessary recommendations from the Komsomol organization and data on seniority, he could not enter the labor department. The writer had to be content with small temporary earnings.
MA Sholokhov takes part in the work of the literary circle "Young Guard", is engaged in self-education. With the support of an old friend L.G. Mirumov, a Bolshevik with experience and a staff member of the GPU, in 1923 the first works of Sholokhov saw the light: "Test", "Three", "Inspector General".
In 1924, the "Young Leninist" edition published the first story from a later collection of Don stories published on its pages. Each short story in the collection is partly a biography of Sholokhov himself. Many of the characters in his works are not fictional. These are real people who surrounded the writer in childhood, adolescence and later age.
The most significant event in the creative biography of Sholokhov was the publication of the novel The Quiet Don. The first two volumes were printed in 1928. In several storylines, M. A. Sholokhov extensively shows the life of the Cossacks during the First World War, and then the Civil War.
Despite the fact that the main character of the novel, Grigory Melekhov, did not accept the revolution, the work was approved by Stalin himself, who gave permission for the press. Later, the novel was translated into foreign languages \u200b\u200band brought worldwide popularity to Sholokhov Mikhail Alexandrovich.
Another epic work about the life of the Cossack villages is Virgin Soil Upturned. The description of the process of collectivization, the eviction of the so-called kulaks and podkulaks, the images of activists created speak of the author's ambiguous assessment of the events of those days.
Sholokhov, whose biography was closely connected with the life of ordinary collective farmers, tried to show all the shortcomings in the creation of collective farms and the lawlessness that often took place in relation to the ordinary inhabitants of the Cossack villages. The adoption of the idea of \u200b\u200bcreating collective farms as a whole gave rise to approval and appreciation of the work of Sholokhov.
After a while, “Virgin Soil Upturned” is introduced for compulsory study in the school curriculum, and from that moment on, Sholokhov’s biography is studied along with the biographies of the classics.
After highly appreciating his work, M. A. Sholokhov continued to work on The Quiet Don. However, the continuation of the novel reflected the growing ideological pressure that was exerted on the author. Sholokhov's biography was supposed to be a confirmation of yet another transformation of a doubter of the ideals of the revolution into a "firm communist".
A family
Sholokhov lived all his life with one woman, with whom the entire family biography of the writer is connected. The decisive event in his personal life was a brief meeting in 1923, after returning from Moscow, with one of the daughters of P. Gromoslavsky, who was once a village ataman. Arriving to marry one daughter, Mikhail Sholokhov, on the advice of a future father-in-law, will marry her sister, Maria. Maria graduated from high school and at that time taught in elementary school.
In 1926 Sholokhov became a father for the first time. As a consequence, the writer's family biography is replenished with three more joyful events: the birth of two sons and another daughter.
Creativity of the war and post-war years
During the war, Sholokhov worked as a war correspondent, his creative biography during this period was replenished with short essays and stories, including “Cossacks”, “On the Don”.
Many critics who studied the writer's work said that M. A. Sholokhov spent all his talent on writing The Quiet Don, and everything written after the artistic skill is much weaker than even the earliest works. The only exception was the novel “They Fought for the Motherland,” which the author did not complete until the end.
In the postwar period, Mikhail Sholokhov is mainly engaged in journalistic activities. The only strong work, which replenished the creative biography of the author, is "The Fate of Man."
Authorship problem
Despite the fact that Mikhail Sholokhov is one of the famous Soviet prose writers, his biography contains information about several proceedings related to plagiarism charges.
Particular attention was drawn to "Quiet Don". Sholokhov wrote it in a very short time for such a large-scale work, the biography of the author, who at the time of the events described was a child, also aroused suspicion. Among the arguments against Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov, some researchers cited the fact that the quality of the stories written before the novel was much lower.
A year after the publication of the novel, a commission was created, which confirmed that it was Sholokhov who was the author. Members of the commission examined the manuscript, checked the author’s biography, and established facts confirming work on the work.
Among other things, it was established that Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov spent a long time in the archives, and the creation of one of the main storylines was helped by the biography of a real co-worker of his father, who was one of the leaders of the uprising depicted in the book.
Despite the fact that Sholokhov was subject to similar suspicions, and his biography contains some ambiguities, the role of the writer in the development of literature of the 20th century can hardly be overestimated. It was he, like no one else, who managed to accurately and reliably convey the whole variety of human emotions of ordinary workers, residents of small Cossack villages.
Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov is one of the most famous Russians of the period. His work covers the most important events for our country - the 1917 revolution, the Civil War, the formation of a new government and the Great Patriotic War. In this article we will tell you a little about the life of this writer and try to consider his works.
Short biography. Childhood and youth
During the Civil War he was with the Reds and rose to the rank of commander. Then, after its graduation, he moved to Moscow. Here he received his first education. After moving to Boguchar, he entered the gymnasium. Upon graduation, he returned to the capital again, wanted to get a higher education, but could not enter. To feed himself, he had to get a job. During this short period, he changed several specialties, continuing to engage in self-education and literature.
The first work of the writer was published in 1923. Sholokhov begins to collaborate with newspapers and magazines, writes feuilletons for them. In 1924, the story “Mole,” the first of the Don cycle, was published in The Young Leninist.
True glory and the last years of life
The list of works by M. A. Sholokhov should begin with The Quiet Don. It was this epic that brought the author real fame. Gradually, it became popular not only in the USSR, but also in other countries. The second great work of the writer was Virgin Soil Upturned, which was awarded the Lenin Prize.
During the Great Patriotic War, Sholokhov was. At this time, he wrote many stories about this terrible time.
In 1965, the year became significant for the writer - he was awarded the Nobel Prize for the novel "The Quiet Don". Since the 60s, Sholokhov practically stopped writing, devoting his free time to fishing and hunting. He donated most of his income to charity and led a relaxed lifestyle.
The writer died on February 21, 1984. The body was buried on the banks of the Don in the courtyard of his own house.
The life that Sholokhov lived is full of unusual and bizarre events. A list of the writer's works we will present below, and now let's talk a little more about the fate of the author:
- Sholokhov was the only writer who received the Nobel Prize with the approval of the authorities. The author was also called "Stalin's favorite".
- When Sholokhov decided to marry one of the daughters of Gromoslavsky, a former Cossack chieftain, he proposed to marry the eldest of the girls, Marya. The writer, of course, agreed. The couple lived in marriage for almost 60 years. During this time, they had four children.
- After the release of The Quiet Don, critics had doubts that the author of such a large and complex novel was indeed such a young author. By order of Stalin himself, a commission was established, which conducted a study of the text and made a conclusion: the epic was indeed written by Sholokhov.
Features of creativity
Sholokhov's works are inextricably linked with the image of Don and the Cossacks (the list, titles and plots of the books are direct evidence of this). It is from the life of his native places that he draws images, motives and themes. The writer himself said this: "I was born on the Don, grew up there, studied and formed as a person ...".
Despite the fact that Sholokhov focuses on describing the life of the Cossacks, his works are not limited to regional and local themes. On the contrary, using their example, the author manages to raise not only the problems of the country, but also universal and philosophical ones. The writer's works reflect deep historical processes. Associated with this is another distinctive feature of Sholokhov's work - the desire to artistically reflect the turning points in the life of the USSR and how people felt when caught in this whirlpool of events.
Sholokhov was inclined towards monumentalism, he was attracted by issues related to social changes and the fate of peoples.
Early works
Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov began writing very early. The works (prose was always preferable for him) of those years were devoted to the Civil War, in which he himself took a direct part, although he was still quite a young man.
Sholokhov mastered the writing skill from a small form, that is, from stories that were published in three collections:
- "Azure Steppe";
- Don Stories;
- "About Kolchak, nettles and other things."
Despite the fact that these works did not stray beyond the framework of social realism and in many respects glorified the Soviet regime, they stood out strongly against the background of other works of Sholokhov's contemporary writers. The fact is that already in these years Mikhail Alexandrovich paid special attention to the life of the people and the description of national characters. The writer tried to paint a more realistic and less romanticized picture of the revolution. In the works there is cruelty, blood, betrayal - Sholokhov tries not to smooth out the severity of time.
At the same time, the author does not in the least romanticize death and does not poeticize cruelty. He sets accents in a different way. Kindness and the ability to preserve humanity remain the main thing. Sholokhov wanted to show how "the Don Cossacks simply died in the steppes." The originality of the writer's creativity lies in the fact that he raised the problem of revolution and humanism, interpreting actions from the point of view of morality. And most of all, Sholokhov was worried about the fratricide that accompanies any civil war. The tragedy of many of his heroes was that they had to shed their own blood.
"Quiet Don"
Perhaps the most famous book that Sholokhov wrote. We will continue the list of works with her, since the novel opens the next stage of the writer's work. The author began writing the epic in 1925, immediately after the publication of the stories. Initially, he did not plan such a large-scale work, wishing only to depict the fate of the Cossacks in revolutionary time and his participation in the "suppression of the revolution." Then the book got the name "Don region". But Sholokhov did not like the first pages he wrote, since the ordinary reader would not understand the motives of the Cossacks. Then the writer decided to start his story in 1912, and finish in 1922. The meaning of the novel has changed, as has the title. The work on the work took 15 years. The final version of the book was published in 1940.
Virgin Soil Upturned
Another novel created by M. Sholokhov for several decades. The list of the writer's works is impossible without mentioning this book, since it is considered the second most popular after The Quiet Don. Virgin Soil Upturned consists of two books, the first was completed in 1932, and the second in the late 50s.
The work describes the process of collectivization in the Don, witnessed by Sholokhov himself. The first book can generally be called a reportage from the scene. The author very realistically and colorfully recreates the drama of this time. Here there is dispossession, and gatherings of farmers, and the killing of people, and the slaughter of cattle, and the theft of collective farm grain, and the woman’s riot.
The plot of both parts is based on the confrontation between class enemies. The action begins with a double tie - the secret arrival of Polovtsev and the arrival of Davydov, and also ends with a double denouement. The whole book is based on the opposition of red and white.
Sholokhov, works about the war: list
Books dedicated to World War II:
- The novel They Fought for the Motherland;
- Stories "Science of Hate", "The Fate of Man";
- Essays "In the South", "On the Don", "Cossacks", "In Cossack Collective Farms", "Vileness", "Prisoners of War", "In the South";
- Publicism - "The Struggle Continues", "A Word about the Motherland", "The Executioners Cannot Escape from the Court of Nations!", "Light and Darkness".
During the war years Sholokhov worked as a war correspondent for Pravda. The stories and essays describing these terrible events had some distinctive features that identified Sholokhov as a writer-battle fighter and even survived in his post-war prose.
The author's essays can be called the annals of war. Unlike other writers working in the same direction, Sholokhov never directly expressed his view of events, the heroes spoke for him. Only at the end did the writer allow himself to summarize.
Sholokhov's works, despite the theme, retain a humanistic orientation. At the same time, the main character changes slightly. It becomes a person who is able to realize the importance of his place in the world struggle and understand that he is responsible to his comrades-in-arms, relatives, children, life itself and history.
“They fought for their homeland”
We continue to analyze the creative heritage that Sholokhov left (list of works). The writer perceives war not as a fatal inevitability, but as a socio-historical phenomenon that tests the moral and ideological qualities of people. The fates of individual characters form a picture of an epoch-making event. These principles formed the basis of the novel They Fought for the Motherland, which, unfortunately, was never finished.
According to Sholokhov's plan, the work was to consist of three parts. The first was to describe the pre-war events and the struggle of the Spaniards with the Nazis. And already in the second and third, the struggle of the Soviet people against the invaders would have been described. However, not a single part of the novel was published. Only individual chapters were published.
A distinctive feature of the novel is the presence of not only large-scale battle scenes, but also sketches of everyday soldier's life, which often have a humorous connotation. At the same time, soldiers are well aware of their responsibility to the people and the country. Their thoughts of home and homeland become tragic as their regiment retreats. Consequently, they cannot justify the trust placed in them.
Summing up
A tremendous career has passed Sholokhov Mikhail Alexandrovich. All the works of the author, especially if viewed in chronological order, confirm this. If we take early and later stories, the reader will see how much the writer's skill has grown. At the same time, he managed to maintain many motives, such as loyalty to his duty, humanity, loyalty to his family and country, etc.
But the writer's works are not only of artistic and aesthetic value. First of all, Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov aspired to be a chronicler (biography, list of books and diary entries confirm this).
| Memorial plaque in Moscow | ||
| Tombstone (view 1) | ||
| Monument in Rostov-on-Don | ||
| Monument in Moscow (on Gogolevsky Boulevard) | ||
| Bronze bust at home (view 1) | ||
| Monument in Moscow (on Volzhsky Boulevard) | ||
| Monument in Boguchar | ||
| Memorial sign in Boguchar | ||
| Memorial plaque in Boguchar (on the building of the gymnasium) | ||
| Memorial plaque in Boguchar (on the house where the writer lived) | ||
| Bronze bust at home (view 2) | ||
| Memorial estate in Vyoshenskaya | ||
| Tombstone (view 2) |
Sholokhov Mikhail Aleksandrovich - the great Russian writer, the largest Russian prose writer, the classic of Russian Soviet literature, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences, reserve colonel.
Born on May 11 (24), 1905 on the Kruzhilin farm of the village of the Vyoshenskaya Oblast of the Don Cossack (now the Sholokhovsky District of the Rostov Oblast). The illegitimate son of a Ukrainian woman, wife of a Don Cossack A.D. Kuznetsova (1871-1942) and a wealthy clerk (son of a merchant, a native of Ryazan) A.M. Sholokhov (1865-1925). In early childhood, he surnamed Kuznetsov, received a plot of land as "son of a Cossack." In 1913, after adoption by his father, he lost Cossack privileges, becoming the "son of a tradesman." Grew up in an atmosphere of obvious ambiguity, which, obviously, gave rise to a craving for truth and justice in Sholokhov’s character, but also at the same time the habit of hiding everything about himself.
From 1915 to March 1918 he studied at the Bogucharsk male classical gymnasium. He lived on 2nd Meshchanskaya Street (now Prokopenko Street) in the house of priest D.I. Tishansky. He graduated from incomplete three classes of the gymnasium, the Civil War prevented (in official sources, he graduated from four classes). During the Civil War, the Sholokhov family could be hit from two sides: for the White Cossacks they were “nonresident”, for the Reds “exploiters”. Young Sholokhov did not have a passion for hoarding (like his hero, the son of a wealthy Cossack Makar Nagulnov) and took the side of the victorious force that established at least a relative peace, served in the food detachment, but arbitrarily reduced the taxation of people of his circle; was sentenced (suspended for 1 year).
His senior friend and mentor, a member of the RSDLP (b) since 1903, E.G. Levitskaya (Sholokhov himself joined the party in 1932), to whom the story "The Fate of a Man" was later dedicated, believed that in the "vacillations" of Grigory Melekhov in "Quiet Don" is a lot of autobiographical. Sholokhov changed many professions, especially in Moscow, where he lived for a long time from the end of 1922 to 1926. Then, after gaining a foothold in literature, he settled in his homeland in the village of Veshenskaya.
In 1923, Sholokhov published feuilletons, from the end of 1923 - stories in which he immediately switched from feuilleton comedy to acute drama, reaching the point of tragedy. At the same time, the stories were not devoid of melodramatic elements. Most of these works were collected in the collections "Don Stories" (1925) and "Azure Steppe" (1926, supplemented by the previous collection). With the exception of the story "Alien Blood" (1926), where the old man Gavrila and his wife, who have lost their son, a white Cossack, nurture a communist food soldier and begin to love him like a son, and he leaves them, in the early works of Sholokhov's characters are mostly abrupt divided into positive (red fighters, Soviet activists) and negative, sometimes unalloyed villains (white, "bandits", fists and fists). Many characters have real prototypes, but Sholokhov sharpens almost everything, exaggerates: death, blood, torture, the pangs of hunger is deliberately naturalistic. Beginning with Moles (1923), the young writer’s favorite subject is the deadly clash of the closest relatives: father and son, siblings.
Sholokhov still unskilfully confirms his loyalty to the communist idea, emphasizing the priority of social choice in relation to any other human relations, including family ones. In 1931, he republished Don Stories, adding new ones, in which the emphasis was placed on the comic in the behavior of the heroes (later, in Virgin Soil Upturned, he combined comicism with drama, sometimes quite effectively). Then, for almost a quarter of a century, stories were not reprinted, the author put them very low and returned them to the reader when, for want of a new one, they had to recall the forgotten old.
In 1925, Sholokhov began a work about the Cossacks in 1917, during the Kornilov rebellion, entitled “The Quiet Don” (and not “Don”, according to legend). However, this idea was abandoned, but a year later the writer again takes up "Quiet Don", widely deploying pictures of the pre-war life of the Cossacks and the events of the First World War. The first two books of the epic novel were published in 1928 in the October magazine. Almost immediately, doubts arise about their authorship, too much knowledge and experience required a work of such a scale. Sholokhov brings the manuscripts to Moscow for examination (in the 1990s, the Moscow journalist L.E. Kolodny gave their description, though not strictly scientific, and comments to them). The young writer was full of energy, had a phenomenal memory, read a lot (even the memories of white generals were available in the 1920s), questioned the Cossacks in don farms about the “German” and civil wars, and he knew the life and customs of his native Don like no one else.
The events of collectivization (and those preceding it) delayed work on the epic novel. In letters, including to J.V. Stalin, Sholokhov tried to open his eyes to the true state of affairs: the complete collapse of the economy, lawlessness, torture applied to collective farmers. However, he accepted the very idea of \u200b\u200bcollectivization and in a softened form, with indisputable sympathy for the main heroes-communists, showed on the example of the farm Gremyachy Log in the first book of the novel Virgin Soil Upturned (1932). Even a very smoothed depiction of dispossession of kulaks ("right deviator" Razmetny) was very suspicious for the authorities and semi-official writers, in particular, the magazine "New World" rejected the author's title of the novel "With Blood and Sweat." But in many respects, the work suited J.V. Stalin. The high artistic level of the book, as it were, proved the fruitfulness of communist ideas for art, and courage within the framework of what was permitted created the illusion of freedom of creativity in the USSR. “Virgin Soil Upturned” was declared the perfect model of literature of socialist realism and soon entered all school curricula, becoming a compulsory work for study.
This, directly or indirectly, helped Sholokhov to continue work on The Quiet Don, the publication of the third book (sixth part) of which was delayed due to the rather sympathetic portrayal of the participants in the anti-Bolshevik Upper Don Uprising of 1919. Sholokhov turned to M. Gorky and with his help obtained permission from J.V. Stalin to publish this book without cuts (1932), and in 1934 he basically completed the fourth, the last one, but began to rewrite it again, probably not without tightening ideological pressure. In the last two books of The Quiet Don (the seventh part of the fourth book was published in 1937-1938, the eighth - in 1940), many journalistic, often didactic, unambiguously pro-Bolshevik declarations appeared, quite often contradicting the plot and imagery of the epic novel . But this does not add arguments to the theory of "two authors" or "author" and "co-author", developed by skeptics who irrevocably do not believe in Sholokhov's authorship (among them A.I.Solzhenitsyn, I.B. Tomashevskaya). Apparently, Sholokhov himself was his “co-author”, preserving mainly the artistic world he created in the early 1930s, and attaching an ideological orientation in a purely external way.
In 1935, EG Levitskaya admired Sholokhov, finding that he had turned "from a" doubter, "staggering, into a firm communist, knowing where he was going, clearly seeing both the goal and the means to achieve it." Undoubtedly, the writer convinced himself of this and, although in 1938 he almost fell a victim of false political accusations, he found the courage to end Quiet Don with the complete collapse of his beloved hero Grigory Melekhov, crushed by the wheel of cruel history.
There are more than 600 characters in the epic novel, and most of them perish or die of grief, hardship, absurdities and disorder of life. The Civil War, although it seems at first a “toy” to the “German” veterans, kills the lives of almost all the heroes who are remembered and loved by the reader, and the bright life for which such sacrifices were supposedly to be made does not occur.
Both struggling parties are to blame for what is happening, inciting bitterness in each other. Among the reds, Sholokhov doesn’t have such born executioners as Mitka Korshunov, the Bolshevik Bunchuk is engaged in executions and is ill at such a “job,” but he was the first to kill his comrade, Yesaul Kalmykov, it was Bunchuk, the Reds chopped up the prisoners, shot the arrested farmers, and Mikhail Koshevoy is pursuing his former friend Gregory, although he forgave him even the murder of his brother Peter. It’s not only the agitation of Shtokman and other Bolsheviks that is to blame, misfortunes cover people like an avalanche sweeping away in their path as a result of their own bitterness, due to mutual misunderstanding, injustices and insults.
The epic content in "Quiet Don" did not supplant the novel, the personal. Sholokhov, like no one else, was able to show the complexity of a simple person (intellectuals do not cause sympathy with him, in “Quiet Don” they are mainly in the background and speak invariably in bookish language even with Cossacks who do not understand them). The passionate love of Gregory and Aksinya, the faithful love of Natalya, the wildness of Daria, the ridiculous mistakes of the aging Pantelei Prokofich, the mortal longing of her mother for her son not returning from the war (Ilyinichny according to Gregory) and other tragic interweaving of life make up a rich gamut of characters and situations. Meticulously and, of course, lovingly portrayed the life and nature of the Don. The author conveys the sensations experienced by all human senses. The intellectual limitations of many heroes are compensated by the depth and acuteness of their experiences.
In 1939, Sholokhov was elected a full member (academician) of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
In The Quiet Don, the writing talent spilled over into full force - and was almost exhausted. Probably, this was facilitated not only by the social situation, but also by the increasing addiction of the writer to alcohol. The story "The Science of Hatred" (1942), which campaigned for hatred of the Nazis, in terms of artistic quality turned out to be below average from the "Don Stories". The level of chapters from the novel "They Fought for the Motherland", which was conceived as a trilogy, but never finished (in the 1960s, Sholokhov attributed "pre-war" chapters with talks about J.V. Stalin and repressions 1937 in the spirit of the already ending “thaw”, they were printed with notes, which completely deprived the writer of creative inspiration). The work consists mainly of soldiers' conversations and tales, oversaturated with jokes. In general, Sholokhov’s failure in comparison not only with the first, but also with the second novel is obvious.
By a resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of March 15, 1941, Sholokhov was awarded the Stalin (State) Prize of the 1st degree for the novel "Quiet Don".
After the war, Sholokhov, a publicist, paid a generous tribute to the semi-official state ideology, but noted the "thaw" with a work of rather high dignity - the story "The Fate of a Man" (1956). An ordinary person, a typically Sholokhov hero, appeared in a genuine moral greatness that he himself did not realize. Such a story could not appear in the "first post-war spring", to which the meeting of the author and Andrei Sokolov was timed: the hero was captured, drank vodka without a snack, so as not to humiliate himself before the German officers - this, like the humanistic spirit of the story, was by no means not in line with the official literature nurtured by Stalinism. "The fate of man" was at the origins of a new concept of personality, wider - a new big stage in the development of literature.
The second book "Virgin Soil Upturned", completed with publication in 1960, remained basically only a sign of a transitional period, when humanism stuck out in every possible way, but thus the desired was passed off as reality. "Warming" images of Davydov (sudden love for "Varyukha-bitter"), Nagulnov (listening to rooster singing, secret love for Lushka), Razmetnov (shooting cats in the name of saving pigeons - popular at the turn of the 1950s-1960s "birds of the world" ) was emphasized "modern" and did not fit with the harsh realities of 1930, which formally remained the basis of the plot. In April 1960, for the novel "Virgin Soil Upturned", Sholokhov was awarded the Lenin Prize.
In October 1965, Mikhail Sholokhov was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for the artistic strength and integrity of the epic about the Don Cossacks at a crucial time for Russia".
On December 10, 1965, in Stockholm, the king of Sweden presented Sholokhov with a diploma and a gold medal of the Nobel Prize laureate, as well as a check for the sum of money. In his speech during the award ceremony, the writer said that his goal was “to exalt the nation of toilers, builders and heroes”. Sholokhov is the only Soviet writer to receive the Nobel Prize with the consent of the USSR authorities.
In 1966, he spoke at the 23rd Congress of the CPSU and spoke about the case of A.D.Sinyavsky and Yu.M. Daniel: “Others, hiding behind words about humanism, groan about the severity of the sentence ... If these young fellows with a dark conscience were caught in the memorable twenties, when they were tried, not relying on strictly delimited articles of the Criminal Code, but “guided by the revolutionary sense of justice,” oh, these werewolves would have received the wrong measure of punishment! ”. This statement made the figure of Sholokhov odious for a significant part of the intelligentsia in the USSR and the West.
The writer L.K. Chukovskaya in her letter to Sholokhov predicted creative infertility after his speech at the XXIII Congress of the CPSU (1966) with the defamation of convicts for publishing works abroad (the first Brezhnev time process against writers) A.D. Sinyavsky and Yu.M. Daniel The prediction came true completely.
Atby the Kaz of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of February 23, 1967 for outstanding services in the development of Soviet culture, the creation of works of art of socialist realism, which received national recognition and actively contribute to the communist education of workers, for fruitful social activities Sholokhov Mikhail Alexandrovichawarded the title Hero of Socialist Labor with the award of the Order of Lenin and the Gold Medal "Hammer and Sickle."
Written by Sholokhov at his best, it is a high classics of 20th century literature, with all the shortcomings that mark even his most outstanding works. One of the most significant features of Sholokhov’s talent is his ability to see in life and reproduce in art all the wealth of human emotions - from tragic hopelessness to funny laughter.
The contribution of Sholokhov - one of the leading masters of the literature of socialist realism - to world art is determined primarily by the fact that in his novels, for the first time in the history of world literature, the working people appear in all the wealth of types and characters, in such a fullness of social, moral, emotional life, which puts them in a series of undying images of world literature. In his novels, the poetic heritage of the Russian people was combined with the achievements of the realistic novel of the 19th and 20th centuries, he discovered new, previously unknown connections between the spiritual and the material, between man and the world around him. In the epic of Sholokhov, man, society, nature appear as manifestations of the ever-creating stream of life; their unity and interdependence determine the originality of the poetic world of Sholokhov. The writer's works have been translated into almost all languages \u200b\u200bof the peoples of the USSR, as well as foreign languages.
Atkazom of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on May 23, 1980 for outstanding services in the development of Soviet literature and in connection with the seventy-five years from the date of his birth was awarded the Order of Lenin and the second gold medal "Hammer and Sickle".
Member of the CPSU (b) / CPSU since 1932, member of the Central Committee of the CPSU since 1961, deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the 1-9th convocations.
Until the end of his life he lived in his house in the village of Veshenskaya, Rostov Region. He died on February 21, 1984 from throat cancer caused by smoking. He was buried in the courtyard of the house in which he lived.
Colonel (1943). He was awarded 6 Orders of Lenin (01/31/1939, 05/23/1955, 05/22/1965, 02/23/1967, 05/22/1975, 05/23/1980), Orders of the October Revolution (07/02/1971), Patriotic War 1st degree (09/23/1945) , medals, as well as orders and medals of foreign countries, including the Order of the GDR "The Great Golden Star of Friendship of Peoples" (1964), the Bulgarian Orders of George Dimitrov (1975) and Cyril and Methodius 1st degree (1973).
Laureate of the Lenin Prize (1960), the Stalin Prize of the 1st degree (1941), the Nobel Prize in Literature (1965), the International Literary Prize Sofia (1975), the International Peace Prize in the Field of Culture of the World Peace Council (1975), and the International Prize "Lotus" of the Writers' Association of Asia and Africa (1978).
Honorary Citizen of the city of Boguchar, Voronezh Region (1979).
A bronze bust of M.A.Sholokhov was installed in the village of Vyoshenskaya, Rostov Region; monuments - in Moscow on the Volzhsky and Gogolevsky boulevards, Rostov-on-Don, Millerovo, Rostov region, Boguchar, Voronezh region; a symbolic commemorative sign on the territory of a boarding school (former male gymnasium) in the city of Boguchar, Voronezh region; memorial plaques - in the city of Boguchar, Voronezh region, on the building in which he studied and on the house in which he lived during his studies, as well as in Moscow on the house in which he lived during his visits to the capital. Streets in many cities are named after him.
Sholokhov Mikhail Alexandrovich. Born on May 24, 1905 in the village. Kruzhilin, Art. Vyoshenskaya, Rostov region
Father - a salesman before the revolution, after, that is, under Soviet power, a food worker. He died in 1925. Mother was killed in 1942 during the bombing of Art. Vyoshenskaya by German airplanes. He studied at the beginning. school, then in the male gymnasium. He graduated from 4 classes in 1918. Since 1923 - a writer. He joined the party in 1930, party card number 0981052. Admitted to the CPSU (b) Vyoshenskaya party organization. He was not subjected to party penalties, he was not a member of the Trotskyist or other counter-revolutionary organizations, he did not deviate from the party line. He was drafted into the army in July 1941 with the rank of regimental commissar. He served as a specialist. war correspondent. Demobilized in December 1945. Awarded the Order of the Fatherland. war I st., medals. I was not in captivity.
Vedomosti of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR Heroes of Socialist Labor: biobibliogr. words. Vol. 1. - Moscow, 2007.