Mikhail Sholokhov (1905-1984) - Russian prose writer, journalist, screenwriter. He received the Nobel Prize in 1965 for his contribution to world literature (the 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 (farm Kruzhilin, Veshenskaya village) in a prosperous family, his father was a clerk of a commercial store and the manager of a steam mill, his mother was a Cossack by birth, she was a servant in the panorama estate Yasenevka, she was forcibly married to a Cossack stanitsa 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 (after 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 the house, in 1914 he began to study in the preparatory class of the Moscow Men's Gymnasium. 1915-1918 - studying at the gymnasium in the city of 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 a procurement office, and his son was in charge of office work in the village revolutionary committee. Having completed 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 appraisal, was captured by Makhno. In September 1922, Mikhail Sholokhov was taken into custody, a criminal case was initiated against him, and even a court sentence 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 certificates, according to which he became a minor, he was released already in March 1923, having been sentenced to 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 workers' faculty member, which he does not succeed, since he lacks work experience and the direction of the Komsomol organization. The future writer worked part-time as a laborer, attended various literary circles and training sessions, the teachers at which were well-known personalities such as Alexander Aseev, Osip Brik, Viktor Shklovsky. In 1923, the newspaper Yunosheskaya Pravda published the feuilleton "Test" by Sholokhov, and later several more works "Three", "The Government Inspector".
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 (the former stanitsa ataman) to “make a man out of him”, he does not marry 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 Mole", 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, but marked the advent of a new writer in Soviet Russian literature, able to notice and reflect in a vivid literary form important trends in the life of that time.
In 1928, living with his family in the village of Veshenskaya, Sholokhov began work on his most grandiose brainchild - the epic novel in four volumes, The 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, was highly appreciated by both the country's party leadership and Comrade Stalin himself. During the Second World War, the novel was translated into many Western European languages and 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 novels in two volumes about 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 novels were written that described the fate of ordinary people who fell into the millstones of war: the stories "The Fate of a Man", "The Science of Hatred", the unfinished story "They fought for the motherland." Subsequently, these works were filmed and became a real classic 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 series 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 gives all the awards he received for his literary achievements to 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, in the end, 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.
Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov - public figure, famous writer, classic"official" Soviet literature, Hero of Socialist Labor twice, Nobel Prize winner, owner of a unique epic talent, who widely revealed himself in a difficult turning point for Russia. He is known as continuer of the traditions of realism L. N. Tolstoy in the new material of life and in the historical epoch of the country. Sholokhov received world fame thanks to his main work - the novel The Quiet Flows the Don, which is ranked to the most powerful novels of the 20th century.
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Mikhail Alexandrovich was born on May 11 (24), 1905 on the Kruzhilin farm of the Donskoy Army in the Veshenskaya region in a Cossack family. Mother comes from a Ukrainian peasant family, served as a maid, who was married against her will to the Cossack-ataman Kuznetsov, but she left him for a rich "out-of-town" clerk, the manager of a steam mill, Sholokhov, a native of the Ryazan province, growing wheat on Cossack land.
Their newborn illegitimate son Mikhail was initially given the surname of the mother's first husband and the boy was considered the "son of a Cossack" for all Cossack privileges, and only in 1912 he began to be called the "son of a tradesman" after Kuznetsov passed away and his real father adopted him.
Sholokhov's childhood and youthful impressions had a great influence on the formation of his personality as a writer. The boundless expanses of his native land, the Don steppes and the verdant banks of the Don won his heart forever. From an early age, he absorbed the daily work on the ground, his native dialect and soulful Cossack songs.
Education in four grades and an uninvited war is the hard fate of a purposeful writer. Later he will say "Poets are born in different ways", or "I, for example, was born out of the Civil War ..."
Before the revolution, the entire Sholokhov family settled in Pleshakovo of the Yelanskaya village on a farm, where the head of the family worked as a mill manager. The father often took his son on trips around the Don and spent a lot of time with him during the holidays. On these trips, the future writer met the captive Czech Ota Gins and David Mikhailovich Babichev, who many years later entered his novel The Quiet Flows the Don under the names Shtokman and Davydka the Roller. Later, Sholokhov studied at the gymnasium and the parochial school.
Already a high school student, Sholokhov met the Drozdov family and brothers Pavel and Alexei became his good friends. But the friendship turns out to be short-lived due to the tragic circumstances that were associated with the Civil War that unfolded on the Don. The elder brother Pavel Drozdov dies in the first battles when the Red Army enters his native farms. Later Sholokhov would write about him in The Quiet Don under the name of Pyotr Melekhov.
Goals and achievements of the writer
In June 1918, young Sholokhov would become a personal witness to an acute class war when the German cavalry entered the county town of Boguchary, located next to his parent's farm. In the summer of the same year, the White Cossacks will occupy the Upper Don, and in the winter of 1919 the Red Army will enter the lands of Pleshakov, and in the spring the Veshensky uprising will break out.
During the uprising, Sholokhov moved to Rubezhnoye and observed the retreat of the rebels and the escape of the White Cossacks. He becomes an eyewitness of how they cross the Don, as he watches everything that happens from the front line.
In 1920, when Soviet power prevailed on the Don, the Sholokhovs moved to the village of Karginskaya, where later the brave son took an active part in the formation of power. He enters the Karginsky Primary School and receives knowledge in the class taught by Mikhail Grigorievich Kopylov (whom Sholokhov writes about in the novel Quiet Flows the Don under his own name).
Not graduating from the Karginsky school due to a severe eye inflammation disease, and due to a forced trip to the Moscow eye clinic, which is also mentioned in the future novel, he remains in Moscow. After recovery, he enters the preparatory class of the Shelaputin gymnasium, then studies at the Bogucharov gymnasium. During an exciting study, he is interested in books by foreign and Russian classic writers, especially the works of Leo Tolstoy.
Sholokhov called literature and history his favorite sciences taught at the gymnasium, while he gives the greatest preference to literary studies; begins to write poems and stories, compose humorous skits. Later, he tries himself in the profession of a teacher of an educational program school, an accountant, a journalist, an employee of the stanitsa revolutionary committee, and others.
In the autumn of 1920, when the borders of the district were crossed by a detachment of Makhno and the bandits plundered and occupied the Karginsky village, Sholokhov was taken prisoner. The interrogation was conducted by Nestor Makhno and threatened with hanging in the event of another meeting with him.
The next year of Sholokhov's life turned out to be even more difficult, local gangs of Melikhov, Makarov Kondratiev, Makarov and Fomin were formed; detachments of Kurochkin, Maslakov and Kolesnikov broke through to the Don. Sholokhov actively participated in the fight against them until their complete disappearance.
In 1922, he again comes to Moscow to enter the workers' faculty, but they do not take him, since he is not a member of the Komsomol. The writer lives by odd jobs, goes to a literary circle called "Young Guard", develops his writing skills, publishes essays and feuilletons in newspapers, and then creates "Don stories", which in 1926 aroused great interest among readers.
In 1925, the writer returns to his native farm and begins his most important work - the novel "Quiet Don", for whose place in literature, he fights until 1940. Due to various kinds of criticism, the book goes a long and difficult way. The description of the events taking place on the Don is called “anathematically talented”, the description of the Cossack uprising of 1919 is not let out into the light, and only after Stalin intervenes in its fate, it becomes fully published and published.
For "Quiet Don" the writer receives the Order of Lenin, and in 1941 the Stalin Prize of the 1st degree.
In 1957 he publishes the story "The Fate of a Man". By the end of his life, he received the Lenin Prize for "Virgin Soil Upturned" and the Nobel Prize for the famous "Quiet Don".
Twice Hero of Labour, Honorary Doctor of European Universities and holder of 6 Orders of Lenin M. A. Sholokhov dies in 1984 due to diseases (diabetes, stroke and throat cancer), however, doctors were surprised at his perseverance and desire to write.
Sholokhov. Interesting facts from life
The creative path of the writer made a huge contribution to Russian literature. The spirit of the people is felt in the works of Sholokhov, which today is a poetic heritage that reflects the real events of the 19th and 20th centuries. Sholokhov discovered new connections in spiritual and material principles between the world and man. His novels for the first time in the history of literature showed the working people in all their diversity, morality and the emotional nature of life.
Sholokhov's work, along with the famous world classics, is a model of world literature, and testifies to the boundless desire to tell history on the example of the writer's own life at all its stages.
- First printed works are in 1923. After the publication of his feuilletons and poems in newspapers and metropolitan magazines, in the newspaper "Young Leninist" Sholokhov's stories were published under the title "The Mole", later they were all combined into collections: "Don stories", "Azure steppe", "About Kolchak, nettles and other things "(1926-1927).
- The most famous The writer was brought by his novel "Quiet Don", which he wrote from 1928 to 1932. His second famous novel is Virgin Soil Upturned, he worked on it until 1959 of his life.
- During the Second World War Sholokhov published such stories as "The Science of Hatred", "Cossacks", "On the Don" and others. In 1956, he wrote the story "The Fate of a Man" and took up writing the novel "They Fought for the Motherland", which are also known to a wide range of readers . Towards the end of his life, he retired from literature due to illness, and gave the awards he received to the construction of new schools.
Sholokhov. Chronological table of life and work
Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov is one of the most famous Russians of the period. His work covers the most important events for our country - the revolution of 1917, the Civil War, the formation of a new government and the Great Patriotic War. In this article we will talk 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 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 support 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 cooperate with newspapers and magazines, writes feuilletons for them. In 1924, the story "The Mole" was published in "The Young Leninist", the first of the Don cycle.
True fame and the last years of life
The list of works by M. A. Sholokhov should begin with The Quiet Flows the 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", awarded the Lenin Prize.
During the Great Patriotic War, Sholokhov was at this time he wrote many stories dedicated to this terrible time.
In 1965, the year became significant for the writer - he was awarded the Nobel Prize for the novel Quiet Flows the Don. Starting from the 60s, Sholokhov practically stopped writing, devoting his free time to fishing and hunting. He gave most of his income to charity and led a quiet life.
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. We will present a list of the writer's works 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 woo one of the daughters of Gromoslavsky, the former Cossack chieftain, he offered 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 Flows the Don, critics had doubts that the author of such a large and complex novel was really 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
The works of Sholokhov are inextricably linked with the image of the 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 spoke about it this way: “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 topics. On the contrary, using their example, the author manages to raise not only the problems of the country, but universal and philosophical ones. Deep historical processes are reflected in the writer's works. Another distinctive feature of Sholokhov's work is connected with this - the desire to artistically reflect the turning points in the life of the USSR and how people who fell into this whirlpool of events felt.
Sholokhov was prone to monumentalism, he was attracted by issues related to social changes and the fate of peoples.
Early works
Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov began to write very early. The works (prose always remained preferable to him) of those years were devoted to the Civil War, in which he himself took a direct part, although he was still quite a youth.
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 go beyond social realism and glorified Soviet power in many ways, they stood out against the background of other works of Sholokhov's contemporaries. The fact is that already in these years, Mikhail Alexandrovich paid special attention to the life of the people and the description of folk characters. The writer tried to portray a more realistic and less romanticized picture of the revolution. There is cruelty, blood, betrayal in the works - Sholokhov tries not to smooth out the severity of time.
At the same time, the author does not romanticize death at all and does not poeticize cruelty. He places emphasis differently. The main thing is kindness and the ability to preserve humanity. Sholokhov wanted to show how "ugly the Don Cossacks simply died in the steppes." The originality of the writer's work 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 fratricide, which 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 by her, since the novel opens the next stage of the writer's work. The author took up 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 portray the fate of the Cossacks in revolutionary times and their participation in the "suppression of the revolution." Then the book was called "Donshchina". But Sholokhov did not like the first pages he wrote, since the motives of the Cossacks would not have been clear to the average reader. Then the writer decided to start his story in 1912 and end in 1922. The meaning of the novel has changed, as has the title. Work on the work was carried out for 15 years. The final version of the book was published in 1940.
"Virgin Soil Upturned"
Another novel that was created by M. Sholokhov for several decades. A list of the writer's works is impossible without mentioning this book, since it is considered the second most popular after The Quiet Flows the 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 on the Don, witnessed by Sholokhov himself. The first book can generally be called a report from the scene. The author very realistically and colorfully recreates the drama of this time. Here there is dispossession, and meetings of farmers, and the killing of people, and the slaughter of cattle, and the plundering of collective farm grain, and the women's revolt.
The plot of both parts is based on the confrontation of class enemies. The action begins with a double plot - the secret arrival of Polovtsev and the arrival of Davydov, and also ends with a double denouement. The whole book rests on the opposition of reds and whites.
Sholokhov, works about the war: list
Books dedicated to the Great Patriotic War:
- The novel "They fought for the Motherland";
- The stories "The Science of Hatred", "The Fate of Man";
- Essays "In the South", "On the Don", "Cossacks", "In the Cossack Collective Farms", "Infamy", "Prisoners of War", "In the South";
- Publicism - “The struggle continues”, “The word about the Motherland”, “The executioners cannot escape the court of peoples!”, “Light and darkness”.
During the war, 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 battle writer and even survived in his post-war prose.
The author's essays can be called a chronicle of the war. Unlike other writers working in the same direction, Sholokhov never directly expressed his view of events, the characters spoke for him. Only at the end did the writer allow himself to sum up a little.
Sholokhov's works, despite the themes, retain a humanistic orientation. At the same time, the main character changes a little. It becomes a person who is able to realize the significance 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 country"
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. From the fates of individual characters, a picture of an epoch-making event is formed. Such principles formed the basis of the novel "They Fought for the Motherland", which, unfortunately, was never completed.
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 against the Nazis. And already in the second and third, the struggle of the Soviet people against the invaders would be described. However, no part of the novel was ever published. Only a few chapters have been released.
A distinctive feature of the novel is the presence of not only large-scale battle scenes, but also sketches of everyday soldier life, which often have a humorous coloring. At the same time, the soldiers are well aware of their responsibility to the people and the country. Their thoughts about home and native places become tragic as their regiment retreats. Therefore, they cannot justify the hopes placed on them.
Summing up
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov passed a huge creative path. All the works of the author, especially if we consider them in chronological order, confirm this. If we take the early stories and the later ones, 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, devotion to family and country, etc.
But the works of the writer have not only artistic and aesthetic value. First of all, Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov strove to be a chronicler (a biography, a list of books and diary entries confirm this).
Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov was born on May 11 (24), 1905. Parents - Alexander Mikhailovich Sholokhov and Anastasia Danilovna Kuznetsova (nee Chernikova). Place of birth - the Kruzhilin village of the village of Veshenskaya, Donetsk district, the former Region of the Don Cossacks.
Father - a raznochinets, a native of the Ryazan province, until his death (1925) changed professions. He was consistently: "shibay" (cattle buyer), sowed bread on purchased Cossack land, served as a clerk in a commercial enterprise on a farm scale, as a manager at a steam mill, etc.
Mother - half-Cossack, half-peasant. I learned to read and write when my father took me to the gymnasium, so that, without resorting to my father's help, I could write letters to me on my own. Until 1912, both she and I had land: she, like the widow of a Cossack, and I, like the son of a Cossack ... ”(M. Sholokhov. Autobiography. 1931).
The house in the Kruzhilin farm, where M.A. Sholokhov was born. Photo by V. Temin. 1930s
“From birth, little Misha breathed wonderful steppe air over the endless expanse of the steppe, and the hot sun scorched him, dry winds carried huge dusty clouds and baked his lips. And the quiet Don, along which the skiffs of the Cossack fishermen blackened, was indelibly reflected in his heart. And the mowing in the loan, and the heavy steppe work of plowing, sowing, harvesting wheat - all this put line after line on the appearance of a boy, then a young man, all this molded him into a young working Cossack, mobile, cheerful, ready for a joke, for a kindly one, cheerful smirk. He also molded him outwardly: a broad-shouldered, strongly built Cossack with a strong steppe bronze face, scorched by the sun and winds.
(A.S. Serafimovich)
Having moved to the Kargin farm, Mikhail Sholokhov first studies at home with a teacher T.T. Mrykhin, and then enters the Karginsky parochial one-class school.
Timofey Timofeevich Mrykhin, the first teacher of M. Sholokhov, was not only a born teacher, but also an expert in Russian literature and folk music, he knew and sang Don Cossack songs well.
In 1914, Mikhail Sholokhov was taken by his father to Moscow to the eye clinic of Dr. K.V. Snegirev (Kolpachny per., 11). The writer brought here his favorite hero Grigory Melekhov, who arrived in Moscow in a medical train to treat an eye damaged in battle. After the October Revolution, K.V. Snegirev lived in the same house and continued to manage the eye clinic. M. Sholokhov remembered the "handsome, trimmed beard" owner of the hospital and described him on the pages of his novel.
T.T.Mrykhin with his wife Ulyana
The former mansion of K.V. Snegirev in Kolpachny Lane.
Upon recovery, Sholokhov was assigned to the preparatory class of the private men's gymnasium. G. Shelaputin (now per. Viktor Kholzunov, 14). It was a well-equipped, well-trained, and state-of-the-art private school. (Now - the building of the General Military Prosecutor's Office).
Misha lived in the apartment of a relative on his father's side - A.P. Ermolov, in Dolgoy lane, on Plyushchikha, 20, apartment 7. (the house has been demolished). He made friends with the owner's son, Sasha Yermolov. He was friends with him until his death in 1969. As Maria Sergeevna Ermolova (wife of A.A. Ermolov) recalled, usually, when the writer was visiting, his passenger car, in which he came to Plyushchikha, at that time drove around Moscow the guys who were gathering from all over the yard. They were the same age as Misha Sholokhov when he lived in Dolgoy Lane, in a small Moscow house.
In 1915, the parents transferred M. Sholokhov to study at the Boguchar men's gymnasium in the Voronezh province. Misha Sholokhov lived in the family of the priest Dmitry Ivanovich Tishansky, who taught the Law of God at the gymnasium. The house had a rich library, and Misha was allowed to read books, which and as much as he wanted.
In 1918, the gymnasium was closed, and he had to go home, to the Pleshakov farm. In the fall, Mikhail was sent to a mixed gymnasium that had just opened in Veshenskaya, where he studied for several months.
Fourteen-year-old Mikhail saw with his own eyes many of the tragic events of the Veshensky uprising of 1919: the massacre of captured Red Army soldiers, the murder of I. A. Serdinov by Daria Drozdova, the presentation of awards and cash bonuses to her by General Sidorin, commander of the Don Army. While living in Pleshakovo, he witnessed the death of the commander of the insurgent hundred cornet Pavel Drozdov (the son of the owner of the house in which the Sholokhov family lived). Separate traits of the characters of family members, especially Pavel and Alexei, according to the writer himself, were reflected in the images of Grigory and Peter Melekhov. In late May - early June, visiting relatives, merchants Mokhovs in Veshenskaya, I witnessed the arrival of the Cossack general A. S. Secretev in Veshenskaya.
“Poets are born in different ways,” M.A. Sholokhov said many years later. “For example, I was born out of the civil war on the Don.”
From an autobiography (1934): “... I could not continue my studies, since the Don region became the scene of a fierce civil war. Before the Don region was occupied by the Red Army, he lived on the territory of the White Cossack government” (IMLI Archive, f. 143, op. 1, item 5).
In 1919, the Sholokhov family moved first to the Rubizhny farm, and then to the village of Karginskaya, where the writer's father bought a Cossack farmstead on the outskirts of the village.
In January 1920, Soviet power was established in the village of Karginskaya. Mikhail Sholokhov works as a clerk, teaches adults to read and write, participates in the population census, serves in the food detachment, and along the way, according to the memoirs of his contemporaries, participates in an amateur theater and even writes plays for the drama club. “Since 1920, he served and roamed the Don land. For a long time he was a laborer. I was chasing the gangs that ruled the Don until 1922, and the gangs were chasing us. I had to be in different bindings ... "
(Sholokhov. Autobiography 1931).
As one of the fighters of the food detachment, he falls into the hands of Nestor Makhno. For various versions of this meeting, see http://veshki-bazar.narod.ru/makhno.htm
In 1922, he met Maria Petrovna Gromoslavskaya, a school teacher and an employee of the Bukanov Executive Committee.
In December 1923, in the village of Bukanovskaya, on January 11, 1924, he married MP Gromoslavskaya, the daughter of the former village chieftain. The Sholokhovs had an eldest daughter Svetlana (1926), then sons Alexander (1930, Rostov-on-Don), Mikhail (1935, Moscow), daughter Maria (1938, st. Veshenskaya).
In October 1922, Sholokhov left for Moscow in order to continue his education and try his hand at writing. However, it was not possible to enter the workers' faculty due to the lack of work experience and direction of the Komsomol required for admission. To feed himself, he worked as a loader, handyman, and bricklayer. Then he was sent by the labor exchange to the position of accountant of the housing department No. 803 in Krasnaya Presnya. He got a small eight-meter room in Georgievsky lane No. 2, apt. 5. In January 1924, Mikhail's wife, Maria Petrovna, came to this room.
He was engaged in self-education, took part in the work of the literary group "Young Guard", attended training sessions conducted by V. Shklovsky, O. Brik, N. Aseev. Joined the Komsomol.
On September 19, 1923, the first publication of Mikhail Sholokhov appeared - the feuilleton "Test (an incident from the life of one county in the Dvina region)" in the newspaper "Youthful Truth" (1923, No. 35) signed by M. Sholokh.
In December 1924, in the newspaper Molodoy Leninets, Sholokhov published his first story, Mole, and in the same month became a member of the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP). From that time on, the intense literary activity of the writer began, closely connected with the life of the people and the largest events in the country.
In 1925, the stories of M. Sholokhov "Aleshkin's Heart" and "Two-husband" were published in separate books in mass circulation.
In 1925 M. Sholokhov met with A. Serafimovich.
In Serafimovich's diary on that day it is written: "And the devil knows how talented! .."
Sholokhov himself later spoke about the role Serafimovich played in his creative destiny: “Serafimovich belongs to the generation of writers from whom we, the youth, studied. Personally, I am truly indebted to Serafimovich, for he was the first to support me at the very beginning of my writing activity, he was the first to say a word of encouragement to me, a word of recognition. This, of course, leaves its mark on our relations. I will never forget the year 1925, when Serafimovich, having familiarized himself with the first collection of my stories, not only wrote a warm introduction to it, but also wanted to see me. Our first meeting took place in the First House of Soviets. Serafimovich assured me that I should continue to write, to study ”(collection“ Word of the Motherland ”. Rostov-on-Don, 1951, p. 84)
Later, at one of the literary evenings of the MAPP, which took place in the building of Proletkult, on Vozdvizhenka, the chairman AS Serafimovich introduced his countryman to the audience. Sholokhov read one of his Don Stories that evening. (Subsequently, he will dedicate the story “Alien Blood” to Serafimovich).
At the very beginning of 1926, the first collection of the writer "Don stories" was published, the preface to which was written by A. Serafimovich. There are 8 stories in the collection, but M. Sholokhov does not stop there, in the same year a new collection is published - “Azure Steppe”, which already includes 12 stories.
In the creative plans of the young writer, the idea of creating a large canvas from the life of the Cossacks is born.
“... I took up the Quiet Don when I was twenty years old, in 1925. At first, interested in the tragic history of the Russian Revolution, I turned my attention to General Kornilov. He led the famous rebellion of 1917. And on his instructions, General Krymov went to Petrograd to overthrow the Provisional Government of Kerensky. For two or one and a half years I wrote 6-8 printed sheets ... then I felt: something was not working out for me. The reader, even the Russian reader, in fact did not know who the Don Cossacks were. There was Tolstoy's story "The Cossacks", but it had the life of the Terek Cossacks as a plot basis. In fact, not a single work was created about the Don Cossacks. The life of the Don Cossacks differs sharply from the life of the Kuban Cossacks, not to mention the Terek ones, and it seemed to me that I should have started by describing this family way of life of the Don Cossacks, so I left the work I had begun in 1925, began<...>from the description of the Melekhov family, and then it dragged on like that ... ”(From a conversation between M. A. Sholokhov and students of the Faculty of Slavic Studies in Uppsala (Sweden) in December 1965).
In October 1927, he met E.G. Levitskaya, head. department of the publishing house of the MK VKP (b) "Moskovsky Rabochiy". Separate editions of "Quiet Don" are published by the publishing house "Moskovsky Rabochiy" in "Roman-gazeta", 1 and 2 books.
In the archives of Moscow, Rostov-on-Don and Novocherkassk, the writer went through and studied many orders, reports, appeals, directives, materials of the Soviet and White Guard press (Priyma K. On a par with the century. Articles on the work of M. A. Sholokhov. Rostov n / a , 1981. S. 161-162.) Gets acquainted with the participants of the Veshensky uprising of 1919. For example, with Kharlampy Vasilyevich Ermakov, the prototype of Grigory Melekhov: http://www.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=736522&cid=460
In 1928, he participated in the work of the 1st All-Union Congress of Proletarian Writers as a delegate of the MAPP.
1928, October 1 - the plenum of the board of the RAPP introduced Sholokhov to the editorial board of the magazine "October".
In 1928-1929, articles "for" and "against" the novel appeared.
In Berlin in 1929, the first translation of The Quiet Flows the Don was published (translator O. Halpern). For the fate of M. Sholokhov's books, see http://rslovar.com/ http://litena.ru/books/item/f00/s00/z0000027/st003.shtml
The first foreign response to the novel "Quiet Don" is an article by Bella Illes in the Hungarian newspaper "100%".
From a review in Die Linkskurve, 1929, no. 3 (October):
Weiskopf F.: “Sholokhov’s “Quiet Don” is the fulfillment of the promise that the young Soviet literature gave to the West, which was beginning to listen to it. Quiet Flows the Don testifies to how a new literature is developing, strong in its originality, a literature that is wide and boundless, like the Russian steppe, young and indomitable, like a new generation there, in the Soviet Union. And the fact that in the already well-known works of young Russian prose writers (“The Defeat” by Fadeev, “Bruski” by Panferov, short stories and stories by Babel and Ivanov) was often just outlined, it was still an embryo - a new angle of view, an approach to the problem from a completely unexpected side, the power of artistic reflection - all this in Sholokhov's novel has already received its full development. The grandeur of its idea, the diversity of life, the penetrating incarnation of "Quiet Flows the Don" resembles "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy. See http://feb-web.ru/feb/sholokh/shl-abc/shl/shl-0461.htm?cmd=2&istext=1
1929-1930 - Creation of the film "Quiet Flows the Don"
Quiet Flows the Don is a 1930 silent film produced in the USSR. The film was sounded in 1933. The first film adaptation of the first two completed books of the novel of the same name by Mikhail Sholokhov. Starring A. Abrikosov and E. Tsesarskaya. The premiere of the silent film took place on May 14, 1931, sounded on September 14, 1933.
In one of his private letters in 1928, Gorky gives the following assessment to Sholokhov: “Sholokhov, judging by the first volume, is talented ... Every year he nominates more and more talented people. Here is joy. Rus' is very, anathematically talented.” It is M. Gorky who helps M. Sholokhov meet I. Stalin.
1930, after January 5th. Meeting and conversation between M. Sholokhov and I. V. Stalin. In June 1931, at the dacha of A.M. Gorky in Kraskov, M.A. Sholokhov met with I. Stalin.
Rumors of plagiarism intensified after the publication in 1930 of a collection in memory of Leonid Andreev, which included a letter from Andreev to critic Sergei Goloushev, dated September 3, 1917. In this letter, Andreev mentioned Goloushev's "Quiet Don", which after that became the first contender for the title of a genuine author. Only in 1977 did it become clear that the letter was only about travel notes entitled “From the Quiet Don”, published in a Moscow newspaper.
Sholokhov knew this fact. He wrote to Serafimovich: “I received a number of letters from guys from Moscow and from readers in which they ask me and inform me that there are again rumors that I stole The Quiet Don from the critic Goloushev - a friend of L. Andreev - and as if there is indisputable evidence of this in the book-requiem in memory of L. Andreev, composed by his relatives.
In 1930, having interrupted work on The Quiet Don, M. Sholokhov began writing the novel Virgin Soil Upturned (originally called With Sweat and Blood). In 1932, Novy Mir published 1 book of the novel.
In the novel, M. Sholokhov tells about the resistance of the Russian peasantry to forced collectivization. In letters, including to Stalin, the writer tries to open his eyes to the true state of things: the complete collapse of the economy, lawlessness, and torture applied to collective farmers. In the 40-50s. he subjected the first volume to a significant revision, and in 1960 completed work on the second volume.
In 1933, active work began on the production of the play "Virgin Soil Upturned" at the Leningrad Theater of LOSPS.
Georgian director N.M. Shengelaya begins to work on the filming of the film based on the novel “Virgin Soil Upturned”. M. Sholokhov takes part in writing the script. However, the film was not made. Only in 1938, Y. Raizman, based on the script by M. Sholokhov and S. Yermolinsky, made a film with the participation of artists of the Moscow Art Theater: B. Dobronravov (Davydov), M. Bolduman (Nagulnov), L. Kalyuzhnaya (Lushka), V. Dorofeev (grandfather Shchukar ). The music for the film was written by Georgy Sviridov.
In 1934, August 17 - September 1, M.A. Sholokhov takes part in the work of the 1st All-Union Congress of Writers. Elected to the Presidium of the Congress.
At the end of 1934, M. Sholokhov and his wife went on a business trip to Sweden, Denmark, England, France (which lasted almost 2 months).
In 1934, he met the composer I.I. Dzerzhinsky at the National Hotel in Moscow. The opera Quiet Flows the Don will soon be written. The first production took place on October 22, 1935 at the Leningrad Maly Opera House. The libretto is based on freely reworked episodes from the first and second books of Sholokhov's novel (1925-1929). The plot of the opera differs in many respects from the literary source. The changes affected mainly the image of Aksinya, who is shown in the opera not as a "stranger's wife", but as a lonely woman, passionately feeling, deeply experiencing her personal drama. M. Sholokhov expressed his impression of the opera as follows: Maybe your opera will be liked in big cities, but here, on the Don, its music will be alien and incomprehensible. Since you are writing an opera about the Don Cossacks, how can you ignore their songs ... "
Scene from 3 acts of the opera
Nikandr Khanaev as Grigory Melekhov. Big theater. 1936.
On June 20, 1936, M. Sholokhov spoke at a funeral meeting in the village of Veshenskaya on the day of the funeral of Maxim Gorky, he spoke about his love for him, about his colossal versatile knowledge and about his amazing writing gift.
In 1936, M. Sholokhov corresponded with Nikolai Ostrovsky and managed to meet him in Moscow at the end of 1936, a month before the death of N.A. Ostrovsky. M. Sholokhov wrote an article on the death of the writer: “Millions will learn to win by his example.” For their relationship, see http://www.sholokhov.ru/museum/collection/books/1299/
M. Sholokhov treated the memory of N. A. Ostrovsky with reverence. In 1973, he gave the Museum of N. A. Ostrovsky in Moscow a copy of “How the Steel Was Tempered” with the inscription: “This book has withstood the test of time, its influence on the youth of the socialist countries is still enormous and unchanged. And this is excellent. M. Sholokhov. 26.2.73. Moscow” (autograph, GCP named after N. A. Ostrovsky), and in 1977 he wrote a preface to a three-volume edition of the works of N. A. Ostrovsky in Ukrainian (Kyiv: publishing house “Molod”, 1977).
In the 30s. M. Sholokhov actively "stands up" for many of the repressed and accused of false denunciations (E. Tsesarskaya - the performer of the role of Aksinya, writer E. Permitin - see http://xn--90aefkbacm4aisie.xn--p1ai/content/ya-ne -mogu-umirat, etc.).
In 1940, M. Sholokhov completed the last part of the novel Quiet Flows the Don.
In January 1941, M. Sholokhov was awarded the Stalin Prize for his novel in four books, The Quiet Flows the Don. On June 23, 1941, M. Sholokhov wrote a letter to Marshal S. Timoshenko, in which he asked to transfer the prize awarded to him to the USSR Defense Fund.
"People's Commissar of Defense Tymoshenko. Dear comrade Timoshenko. I ask you to transfer the Stalin Prize awarded to me to the USSR Defense Fund. At your call, at any moment I am ready to join the ranks of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army and defend the socialist Motherland and the great cause of Lenin-Stalin to the last drop of blood. Regimental Commissar of the Red Army Reserve, writer Mikhail Sholokhov.
In 1941-45. serves as a war correspondent for the Soviet Information Bureau. Demobilized in December 1945.
After an accident during a forced landing of a bomber in Kuibyshev, on which M.A. Sholokhov flew on the call of the head of the Sovinformburo, the writer was treated in a hospital for severe concussion and bruises. After treatment, M. A. Sholokhov and the poet E. Dolmatovsky were near Stalingrad. From there they came to the Sholokhov family in Nikolaevsk.
M. A. Sholokhov wrote home about the consequences of the plane crash: “... I underwent an average repair in the Kremlin hospital and now I’m almost in working form, I’m writing, but there was a time when not only to go somewhere, but also not to write could by the prohibition of professors. I almost got disabled, but somehow I got lame, and now I’m already digging the ground with my foot ... ”(Collected works in 9 vols. Vol. 8. S. 322-323).
S. M. Sholokhova recalls that his father had a displacement of all internal organs, but he refused long-term inpatient treatment. He left for Nikolaevka.
The chairman of the collective farm and local fishermen supported the writer, helped with food, brought cream, fish, caviar (From a conversation between N. T. Kuznetsova and S. M. Sholokhova on September 20, 1990).
Learning about all this, Stalin insisted on his vacation. There was a meeting with Stalin.
From Moscow, Sholokhov went to the city of Nikolaevsk, Stalingrad (now Volgograd) region, to move his family to Veshenskaya, as he was convinced that the Germans would not undertake offensive operations in his native places (Mikhail Sholokhov. Chronicle of life and work, 184-185) .
During the war, M. Sholokhov wrote essays “People of the Red Army”, “Prisoners of War”, “In the South”, etc.
During the war, Olga Berggolts remained in besieged Leningrad along with her second husband, Nikolai Molchanov. It was during these difficult blockade days, working in the literary and dramatic editorial office of the Leningrad radio, that she grew from a little-known writer and poetess into a mature author who personified the stamina and courage of the inhabitants of the besieged city.
“In May 1942, at the initiative of Sholokhov, my February Diary was published in Komsomolskaya Pravda, and shortly after that, Leningrad Diary. They evoked a warm response from readers on all fronts ... "
She confided: “They don’t know anything about Leningrad. On the radio, before I could open my mouth, they told me: “No mention of hunger!” Everything is hidden ... just like about Yezhov's prison. Censorship of the truth!
He immediately remembered: this was the wife of the poet Boris Kornilov, who was shot “according to politics,” and she herself served time, but she was lucky, she was released ahead of schedule.
In the evening at the hotel, she read her poems to him, and then took away Sholokhov's Letter to the Leningraders. He began heartily, without pathos: “Fellow comrades of Leningrad! We know how hard it is for you to live, work, fight in an enemy environment ... "
British journalist Alexander Werth recalled this time in his book Russia at War. 1941-1945”: “In the summer of 1942, both in literature and in propaganda, only two feelings reigned supreme. One was the same love for the motherland, which permeated everything that was written in the midst of the battle near Moscow - only now it is even more ardent and tender. It was also love for Russia proper. The second emotion was hatred. During all these months, it grew and grew, until it finally poured out in the darkest days of August into a paroxysm of the most real rage. The cry "Kill the German!" became in Russia the expression of all ten commandments, merged into one. Sholokhov's story "The Science of Hate" published on June 23 in many newspapers, the story of a Russian prisoner of war, whom German soldiers subjected to cruel torture, made a deep impression on the Soviet public. Vividly and convincingly written, this story largely set the tone for the hate propaganda that unfolded in the weeks that followed.
On July 8, 1942, the Nazis bombed the village of Veshenskaya. A fragment of one of the bombs that exploded in the Sholokhovs' courtyard killed the writer's mother, Anastasia Danilovna.
The special correspondent of the "Red Star" M. Sholokhov was assigned to the Stalingrad Front for eight months. On December 22, M. Sholokhov was awarded the medal "For the Defense of Stalingrad". The commander of the 62nd Army, V. I. Chuikov, recalled: “... In the difficult days and nights of the Battle of Stalingrad, Soviet soldiers saw in their midst the writers M. Sholokhov, K. Simonov, A. Surkov, E. Dolmatovsky and other fighters of the “literary shelf". Their word can be compared to a live projectile that smashes the most dangerous target in the camp of the enemy ... ”(Mikhail Sholokhov. Chronicle of Life and Work, 194).
At the end of 1942, immediately after the end of the Battle of Stalingrad, M. Sholokhov began to write the novel "They Fought for the Motherland", separate chapters of the novel were published in 1943-1944 and 1949-1954. in the newspapers "Pravda" and "Red Star". In 1945, the chapters of the novel were published as a separate edition in Rosizdat.
Jack Lindsay (England) in the article "Sholokhov's Innovation" made an interesting observation: "The interpretation that we gave here to the last pages of The Quiet Flows the Don, the tragic and hopeful meeting of Grigory with his son, apparently finds its confirmation in the amazing story "Destiny of Man". A soldier who has escaped from Hitler's captivity and makes his way to the house feels, like Grigory, just as destitute, completely deprived of everything that is most dear to him, although this is due to completely different reasons. Having met a hungry orphan boy on the way, the soldier adopts him. And gradually, in communion with this little living creature, he begins to regain for himself some kind of purpose and hope in life. Here everything is condensed by Sholokhov to the basic features of a tragedy; and yet here, as it were, finds a simple earthly completion of what remains only a symbol in the last scene of The Quiet Flows the Don. Life, stiff, broken, naked and homeless, takes root again; out of the pitiless and inhuman, human intimacy grows and asserts itself - on a wider, fuller and more reliable basis. (Quoted from: Ognev A. Here he is, a Russian man! // Volga. 1980, No. 5. P. 182).
O. G. Vereisky. Illustration for Sholokhov's story "The Fate of a Man". 1958
In 1959, Sergei Bondarchuk made a film based on M. Sholokhov's story "The Fate of a Man". See http://www.liveinternet.ru/users/komrik/post360914827
And 15 years later, Sergei Bondarchuk again turned to the work of his beloved writer. He begins to shoot the film "They fought for the Motherland." Sholokhov for a long time refused to give permission to shoot a film based on an unfinished work, but then he agreed on the condition that he himself choose the place where the film would be shot.
The ensemble cast was superstar: Bondarchuk himself, Vasily Shukshin, Vyacheslav Tikhonov, Georgy Burkov, Yuri Nikulin, Ivan Lapikov, Nikolai Gubenko, Evgeny Samoilov, Andrey Rostotsky, Innokenty Smoktunovsky, Nonna Mordyukova, Irina Skobtseva, Angelina Stepanova, Lidia Fedoseeva-Shukshina...
“M. Sholokhov appreciated the talents of his colleagues and was not afraid to support them. He nominates the disgraced Anna Akhmatova for the highest award in the country, rescues her son, scientist Lev Gumilyov, from prison, seeks the publication of the recent prisoner of the NKVD Olga Berggolts, the outcast writer Andrei Platonov and the release of his son from the camp, signs a letter in defense of Korney Chukovsky, praises prose apolitical Konstantin Paustovsky, the future political emigrant Viktor Nekrasov. He also supported the idea of publishing “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” by A. Solzhenitsyn with a forbidden camp theme” (V.O. Osipov).
In Veshenskaya, M. Sholokhov constantly meets with young writers, helps them in the publication of their works, shares the secrets of mastery. In the 1950-80s. actively engaged in social activities. There are numerous memoirs of contemporaries - doctors, teachers, ordinary collective farmers, students - whom M. Sholokhov helped in difficult everyday situations.
The decision of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to award the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1965 to the Soviet writer M. A. Sholokhov.
According to TASS reports from Sweden, Eric Blomberg, a well-known Swedish poet and publicist, expressing the opinion of the radical circles in Sweden, again nominated Mikhail Sholokhov as a candidate and appeared in Nu Dag with a series of articles devoted to his work.
E. Blomberg's statement in 1935 is well-known: in his opinion, M. A. Sholokhov "like no other, deserves the Nobel Prize, which should be awarded both for artistic merit and for high ideological content." These words of E. Blomberg were cited in the newspapers Social-Democratic and Niu Dag (Pravda, 1965, October 18.) (Mikhail Sholokhov, Chronicle of Life and Work, 373-374).
“He passionately loves his steppe, with its dry winds, sometimes hot, sometimes gentle sun, with its ravines, copses, with its animals, birds. He passionately loves his quiet Don, which, gently bending, so softly, gently hugging the village with green banks, created a surprisingly cozy, sincere, quiet, slightly thoughtful corner. And in the Don there is a fish, a rich, sharp-nosed sterlet, and Sholokhov devotes himself entirely to fishing.
(A. Serafimovich)
In 1984, on January 18, M. Sholokhov wrote from the Central Clinical Hospital to the artist Yu.P. Rebrov: “I received my portrait - your gift, the work that you created. Thank you very much, dear Yuri Petrovich. I remember well how you worked on the illustrations for The Quiet Flows the Don. M.A. Sholokhov.
January 21, 1984 M.A. Sholokhov returns from Moscow to Veshenskaya. The attending physician A.P. Antonova will write later: “It is impossible to operate, it is impossible to save. The ongoing treatment, including repeated laser therapy, extended life by more than two years. Alleviate suffering. And the suffering was severe. Mikhail Alexandrovich was very patient, courageously endured them. And when I realized that a serious illness, a long-term illness was progressing uncontrollably, I made a firm decision to return to Veshenskaya. During the last week of his stay in the hospital, he slept very little at night, he went into himself. He told me, the attending physician, in private: “I made a decision ... to go home. I ask you to cancel all treatment ... nothing else is needed ... Ask Maria Petrovna here ... ”- and fell silent. They called Maria Petrovna. She sat down next to the bed, close. Mikhail Alexandrovich put his weakened hand on her arm and said and asked: “Marusya! Let's go home ... I want homemade food. Feed me at home… As before…”.
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov was born on May 24, 1905 in the Kruzhilin village of the village of Vyoshenskaya in the Donetsk District of the Don Cossack Region (now the Sholokhov District of the Rostov Region).
In 1910, the Sholokhov family moved to the Kargin farm, where at the age of 7 Misha was admitted to the men's parish school. From 1914 to 1918 he studied at the men's gymnasiums in Moscow, Boguchar and Vyoshenskaya.
In 1920-1922. works as an employee in the village revolutionary committee, a teacher for the eradication of illiteracy among adults in x. Latyshev, a clerk in the procurement office of Donprodkom in Art. Karginskaya, tax inspector in Art. Bukanovskaya.
In October 1922 he left for Moscow. Works as a loader, a bricklayer, an accountant in the housing department on Krasnaya Presnya. He gets acquainted with representatives of the literary environment, attends classes of the Young Guard literary association. By this time, the first writing experiments of the young Sholokhov belong. In the autumn of 1923, Youthful Truth published two of his feuilletons - "Test" and "Three".
In December 1923 he returned to the Don. On January 11, 1924, she gets married in the Bukanovskaya Church with Maria Petrovna Gromoslavskaya, the daughter of the former stanitsa ataman.
Maria Petrovna, having graduated from the Ust-Medveditsky diocesan school, worked in Art. Bukanovskaya was first a teacher in an elementary school, then a clerk in the executive committee, where Sholokhov was an inspector at that time. Having married, they were inseparable until the end of their days. The Sholokhovs lived together for 60 years, raising and raising four children.
December 14, 1924 M.A. Sholokhov publishes the first work of art - the story "Birthmark" in the newspaper "Young Leninist". Joins the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers.
Sholokhov's stories "The Shepherd", "Shibalkovo Seed", "Nakhalyonok", "The Mortal Enemy", "Alyoshkino's Heart", "Two Husbands", "Kolovert", the story "The Path-road" appear on the pages of the central publications, and in 1926 they are published collections "Don stories" and "Azure steppe".
In 1925, Mikhail Alexandrovich begins to create the novel Quiet Flows the Don. During these years, the Sholokhov family lived in Karginskaya, then in Bukanovskaya, and since 1926 - in Vyoshenskaya. In 1928, the Oktyabr magazine began publishing Quiet Don.
After the publication of the first volume of the novel, difficult days come for the writer: success with readers is overwhelming, but an unfriendly atmosphere reigns in writers' circles. Envy of a young writer, who is called a new genius, gives rise to slander, vulgar fabrications. The position of the author in describing the Upper Don uprising is sharply criticized by the RAPP, it is proposed to throw out more than 30 chapters from the book, to make the main character a Bolshevik.
Sholokhov is only 23 years old, but he steadfastly and courageously endures attacks. He is helped by confidence in his abilities, in his vocation. To stop malicious slander, rumors of plagiarism, he turns to the executive secretary and member of the editorial board of the Pravda newspaper, M. I. Ulyanova, with an urgent request to create an expert commission and give her the manuscripts of The Quiet Don. In the spring of 1929, the writers A. Serafimovich, L. Averbakh, V. Kirshon, A. Fadeev, V. Stavsky spoke in Pravda in defense of the young author, relying on the conclusions of the commission. The rumors stop. But spiteful critics will more than once attempt to denigrate Sholokhov, who speaks honestly about the tragic events in the life of the country, does not want to deviate from historical truth.
The novel was finished in 1940. In the 1930s, Sholokhov began work on the novel Virgin Soil Upturned.
During the war, Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov was a war correspondent for the Soviet Information Bureau, the Pravda and Krasnaya Zvezda newspapers. He publishes front-line essays, the story "The Science of Hatred", the first chapters of the novel "They Fought for the Motherland." The State Prize awarded for the novel "Quiet Flows the Don" Sholokhov transfers to the USSR Defense Fund, and then acquires four new rocket launchers for the front at his own expense.
For participation in the Great Patriotic War, he has awards - the Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st degree, medals "For the Defense of Moscow", "For the Defense of Stalingrad", "For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945", "Twenty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War".
After the war, the writer finishes the 2nd book of "Virgin Soil Upturned", works on the novel "They Fought for the Motherland", writes the story "The Fate of a Man".
Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov - Nobel, State and Lenin Prizes in literature, twice Hero of Socialist Labor, full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, holder of an honorary doctorate in law from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, PhD from the University of Leipzig in Germany, Doctor of Philology from Rostov State University , Deputy of the Supreme Council of all convocations. He was awarded six Orders of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution, and other awards. In the village of Vyoshenskaya, a bronze bust was erected to him during his lifetime. And this is not a complete list of prizes, awards, honorary titles and public duties of the writer.
