In what year did Sholokhov receive it? Biography

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: "shibai" (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 work of the steppe 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.

Timofei Timofeevich Mrykhin, the first teacher of M. Sholokhov, was not only a born teacher, but also a connoisseur of 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 preface 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, held in the Proletkult building, on Vozdvizhenka, the chairman AS Serafimovich introduced his fellow 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 about 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 Flows the 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 short 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: “Judging by the first volume, Sholokhov is talented ... Every year he nominates more and more talented people. Here is joy. Russia 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 filming a 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: ed. “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 Nikolayevka.

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 resilience 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 in 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. The Soviet public was deeply impressed by Sholokhov's story "The Science of Hate" published on June 23 in many newspapers - the story of a Russian prisoner of war who was subjected to cruel torture by German soldiers. 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 a stunning 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, the 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 one else, 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…”.

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Biography, life story of Sholokhov Mikhail Aleksandrovich

The Russian Soviet writer and prose writer Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov, who later became twice Hero of Socialist Labor and an academician, was the illegitimate son of the clerk A.M. Sholokhov and the wife of the Don Cossack A.D. Kuznetsova. He was born on May 11 (24), 1905 on the Kruzhilinsky farm near the village of Veshenskaya, which was located on the territory of the present Rostov region. Until the age of 7, Mikhail bore the surname of his mother Kuznetsov and, being a “son of a Cossack”, had the right to allot land. In 1913, after being adopted by his own father, Mikhail took his last name, but at the same time, becoming the “son of a tradesman”, he lost all Cossack privileges. Such a clear ambiguity in life, obviously, became the reason for Sholokhov's craving for truth and justice, which appeared in early childhood, which was reflected in his works.

Education

Entering the gymnasium, Mikhail Sholokhov managed to study there for only four classes. The study had to be interrupted due to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 and the tragic events that followed. At the age of 15, the “son of a tradesman” had to work. Until 1921, he changed many professions, ranging from a teacher of an educational program school to an accountant. Everything almost ended in execution, to which Mikhail Sholokhov was sentenced for "abuse of power in grain procurements." However, everything worked out - the sentence was replaced with a year of corrective labor in Bolshevo near Moscow, taking into account the minority of the defendant.

Start

In 1922, despite the sentence, Mikhail Sholokhov went to Moscow, where he tried to continue his studies at the workers' faculty. However, it was not possible to enter due to the lack of work experience and the lack of a referral from the local Komsomol organization. The failure did not discourage the future writer from the desire for knowledge, he devoted all his free time to self-education. In addition, Mikhail Sholokhov began attending meetings of the Young Guard literary group, attending training sessions led by O.M. Brika, V.B. Shklovsky and N.N. Aseeva. In the same year he became a member of the Komsomol.

CONTINUED BELOW

The first works of Mikhail Sholokhov were published with the help of L.G. Mirumov, who at that time was a staff member of the ECU of the GPU. The debut creation, which reached the press, was the feuilleton "Test", which was published in September 1923 in the newspaper "Youthful Truth". The experience was recognized as successful, because within a few months two more feuilletons were printed - "Three" and "Inspector".

In December 1923, Mikhail Sholokhov returned to his homeland, where he got married to Lydia Gromoslavskaya, but in January 1924 he married her older sister Maria, who worked as an elementary school teacher.

In December of the same year, the story "The Mole" was published. This work opened a cycle of Sholokhov's famous Don stories, which were published one after another in the Komsomol periodical press, and then became part of three collections published in 1926-27.

Quiet Don

In 1926, Mikhail Sholokhov began writing one of his landmark works, The Quiet Flows the Don. A detailed description of the picture of the pre-war life of the Cossacks and the events of the First World War took Mikhail Alexandrovich several years. Only in 1928, the first two books of the epic novel were published in the Krasnaya Nov magazine. Work on the third part was interrupted as soon as it began, since the writer began writing the novel Virgin Soil Upturned in 1930.

"Virgin Soil Upturned"

Sholokhov tried in Virgin Soil Upturned to present collectivization in a softened form with sympathy for the main communist characters. However, even a very smooth description of dispossession seemed very suspicious to the censors of literary magazines. Despite this, "Virgin Soil Upturned" was published in 1932, since the work created the illusion of creative freedom in the country, and also proved the usefulness of communist ideas. In addition, he liked the novel, thanks to which he was immediately recognized as a perfect example of socialist realism, entering into all school programs.

Sequel to "Quiet Flows the Don"

The success of "Virgin Soil Upturned" undoubtedly helped Mikhail Aleksandrovich to continue writing the third book of "The Quiet Flows the Don", while speeding up its printing. The censors did not let the sixth part of the epic go to print because of the too sympathetic description of the participants in the Upper Don uprising of 1919. In order to obtain permission for publication without cuts, Mikhail Sholokhov turned directly to M. Gorky, who, after a personal reading, approved the publication of the 3rd book. The fourth and final volume of the epic was printed just before the war in 1940.

During the war and after

Mikhail Alexandrovich spent the years of the war across the Volga in the Stalingrad region. He often traveled to the front as a war correspondent for the Pravda newspaper. These trips resulted in a number of popular essays and stories. In addition, the materials collected at the front made it possible to start the novel "They Fought for the Motherland", a revised version of which was published in 1969. Four years earlier, the writer received the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov died in his native village on February 21, 1984 from cancer of the larynx.

Youth

M. A. Sholokhov was born on May 24, 1905 on the Kruzhilin farm in the village of Vyoshenskaya (now the Kruzhilin farm in the Sholokhov district of the Rostov region). At birth, he received a surname - Kuznetsov, which he changed in 1912 to the surname Sholokhov.

Father - Alexander Mikhailovich Sholokhov (1865-1925) - a native of the Ryazan province, did not belong to the Cossacks, was a "shibai" (cattle buyer), sowed bread on the purchased Cossack land, served as a clerk in a commercial enterprise of a farm scale, manager at a steam mill and etc. Father's grandfather was a merchant of the third guild, originally from the city of Zaraysk, he moved with his large family to the Upper Don in the mid-1870s, bought a house with a farmstead and started buying up grain.

Mother - Anastasia Danilovna Chernyak (1871-1942) - a Cossack mother, the daughter of a peasant migrant to the Don, a former serf of the Chernihiv province. For a long time she was in the service of the panorama Yasenevka. The orphan was forcibly married off by the landowner Popova, for whom she served, to the son of the stanitsa ataman Kuznetsov. But later she left her husband and went to Alexander Sholokhov. Their son Mikhail was born illegitimate and was recorded in the name of his mother's official husband, Kuznetsov. Only after the death of the official husband, in 1913, the boy's parents were able to get married in the church of the Kargin farm (now the village of Karginskaya), and Mikhail received the surname Sholokhov.

In 1910, the family left the Kruzhilin farm: Alexander Mikhailovich entered the service of a merchant in the village of Karginskaya. The father invited a local teacher, Timofey Timofeevich Mrikhin, to teach the boy to read and write. In 1914 he studied for one year in Moscow in the preparatory class of the men's gymnasium. From 1915 to 1918, Mikhail studied at the gymnasium in the city of Boguchar, Voronezh province. He graduated from four classes of the gymnasium (sitting at the same desk with Konstantin Ivanovich Kargin, the future writer who wrote the story "Bakhchevnik" in the spring of 1930). Before the German troops arrived in the city, according to Mikhail, he dropped out of school and went home to the farm. In 1920, the family moved to the village of Karginskaya (after the advent of Soviet power), where Alexander Mikhailovich received the position of head of the procurement office of the Donprodkom, and his son Mikhail became the clerk of the village revolutionary committee.

In 1920-1921 he lived with his family in the village of Karginskaya. After completing the Rostov tax courses, he was appointed to the position of food inspector in the village of Bukanovskaya, then joined the food detachment, participated in the food appraisal. In 1920, a food detachment led by 15-year-old Sholokhov was captured by Makhno. Then he thought that he would be shot, but he was released.

On August 31, 1922, while working as a stanitsa tax inspector, M.A. Sholokhov was arrested and was in the district center under investigation. He was sentenced to be shot. “I led a cool line, and the time was cool; I was a helluva commissar, I was judged by the revolutionary tribunal for exceeding power ... - the writer later said. “I was waiting for death for two days… And then they came and let me out…”. Until September 19, 1922, Sholokhov was in custody. His father gave him a large bail and bailed him home until the trial. The parents brought a new metric to the court, and he was released as a minor (according to the new metric, the age decreased by 2.5 years). This was already in March 1923. Then the “troikas” were judged, the sentences were severe. It was not difficult to believe that he was a minor, since Mikhail was short and looked like a boy. The execution was replaced by another punishment - the tribunal took into account his minority. He was given one year of corrective labor in a juvenile colony and sent to Bolshevo (near Moscow).

In Moscow, Sholokhov tried to continue his education, and also tried his hand at writing. However, it was not possible to enter the preparatory courses of the workers' faculty due to the lack of work experience and the direction of the Komsomol required for admission. According to one source, he worked as a loader, handyman, and bricklayer. According to others, he worked in the house management of the workers' housing-construction cooperative "Take an example!", which was chaired by L. G. Mirumov (Mirumyan). He was engaged in self-education, took part in the work of the literary group "Young Guard", attended training sessions conducted by V. B. Shklovsky, O. M. Brik, N. N. Aseev. Joined the Komsomol. Active assistance in arranging the daily life of M. A. Sholokhov in Moscow and in promoting the first literary works with his autograph was provided by a staff member of the ECU of the GPU, a Bolshevik with pre-revolutionary experience - Leon Galustovich Mirumov (Mirumyan), whom M. A. Sholokhov met in the village of Vyoshenskaya even before arriving in Moscow.

In September 1923, signed “Mikh. Sholokh" in the Komsomol newspaper "Youthful Pravda" ("Young Leninist") (now - "Moskovsky Komsomolets") a feuilleton - "Test" was published, a month later a second feuilleton appeared - "Three", and then the third - "Inspector General". In December 1923, M.A. Sholokhov returned to Karginskaya, and then to the village of Bukanovskaya, where he wooed Lydia Gromoslavskaya, one of the daughters of the former stanitsa ataman Pyotr Yakovlevich Gromoslavsky. But the former chieftain said: "Take Mary, and I will make a man out of you." On January 11, 1924, M. A. Sholokhov married his eldest daughter, Maria Petrovna Gromoslavskaya (1901-1992), who worked as an elementary school teacher (in 1918, M. P. Gromoslavskaya, studied at the Ust-Medveditskaya gymnasium, the director of which at that time consisted of F. D. Kryukov).

The first story "Beasts" (later "Food Commissar"), sent by M. A. Sholokhov in the almanac "Young Guard", was not accepted by the editors. On December 14, 1924, the Molodoy Leninets newspaper published the story Mole, which opened the cycle of Don stories: Shepherd, Ilyukha, Foal, Azure Steppe, Family Man, Mortal Enemy, Two-wife ", etc. They were published in Komsomol periodicals, and then made up three collections, published one after another: "Don stories", "Azure steppe" (both - 1926) and "About Kolchak, nettles and other things" (1927).

After returning to Karginskaya, the eldest daughter Svetlana (1926, st. Karginskaya) was born in the family, then sons Alexander (1930-1990, Rostov-on-Don), Mikhail (1935, Moscow), daughter Maria (1938, Vyoshenskaya).

In 1938, Sholokhov was under threat of going to prison because Chekist Yevdokimov petitioned for Stalin's arrest.

A family

1923, December. Departure of M. A. Sholokhov from Moscow to the village of Karginskaya, to his parents, and together with them to Bukanovskaya, where his bride Lidia Gromoslavskaya and future wife Maria Petrovna Gromoslavskaya lived (since their father Pyotr Yakovlevich Gromoslavsky insisted on the marriage of M. A. Sholokhov on the eldest daughter Maria).

1924, January 11th. The wedding of M. A. and M. P. Sholokhov in the Church of the Intercession of the village of Bukanovskaya. Registration of marriage in the Podtelkovsky registry office (village Kumylzhenskaya).

May 18, 1930 Birth of Alexander's son. Place of birth - Rostov-on-Don. Alexander was married to Violeta Gosheva, the daughter of Bulgarian Prime Minister Anton Yugov.

1942, June. During the bombing of the village of Vyoshenskaya in the courtyard of the house of M. A. Sholokhov, the writer's mother died.

Artworks

• "Mole" (story)
• "Don stories"
• Quiet Don
• "Virgin Soil Upturned"
• "They fought for their country"
• "Destiny of Man"
• "The Science of Hate"
• "Word of the Motherland"

Early stories

In 1923, feuilletons by M. A. Sholokhov were published in newspapers. Beginning in 1924, his stories appeared in magazines, later combined into the collections Don Stories and Azure Steppe (1926).

Quiet Don

Russian and world fame for Sholokhov was brought by the novel "Quiet Don" (1928 - 1-2 vols., 1932 - 3 vols., 4 vols. published in 1940) about the Don Cossacks in the First World War and the Civil War; this work, which combines several storylines, is called an epic. A communist writer who was on the side of the Reds during the Civil War, Sholokhov devotes a significant place in the novel to the White Cossacks, and his main character, Grigory Melekhov, does not “come to the Reds” at the end of the story. This drew criticism from communist critics; however, such an ambiguous novel was personally read by I. V. Stalin and approved by him for publication.

During World War II, The Quiet Flows the Don was translated into European languages ​​and gained popularity in the West, and after the war it was translated into Eastern languages, in the East the novel was also a success.

"Virgin Soil Upturned"

The novel "Virgin Soil Upturned" (vol. 1 - 1932, vol. 2 - 1959) is dedicated to collectivization on the Don and the movement of "25-thousanders". Here the author's assessment of the course of collectivization is expressed; the images of the main characters and the picture of collectivization are ambiguous. The second volume of "Virgin Soil Upturned" was lost during the Great Patriotic War and restored later.

Military works

Subsequently, M. A. Sholokhov published several excerpts from the unfinished novel "They Fought for the Motherland" (1942-1944, 1949, 1969), the story "The Fate of a Man" (1956). In 1941-1945, while working as a war correspondent, he published several essays (“On the Don”, “In the South”, “Cossacks”, etc.) and the story “The Science of Hatred” (1942), and in the first post-war years - several journalistic texts of a patriotic orientation (“The Word about the Motherland”, “The Struggle Continues” (1948), “Light and Darkness” (1949), “The Executioners Cannot Escape the Court of Nations!” (1950), etc.).

Nobel Prize

In 1958 (for the seventh time) Boris Pasternak was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. In March 1958, a delegation of the Union of Writers of the USSR visited Sweden and learned that among those put forward together with Pasternak were the names of Sholokhov, Ezra Pound and Alberto Moravia. Georgy Markov, Secretary of the Board of the Union of Writers of the USSR, said “that among the higher circles<Шведской>Academy there is a certain opinion in favor of Pasternak ", which should be opposed to the publication of materials "about the international popularity of Sholokhov, about his wide popularity in the Scandinavian countries".

It would be desirable, through cultural figures close to us, to make it clear to the Swedish public that the Soviet Union would highly appreciate the award of the Nobel Prize to Sholokhov.

It is also important to make it clear that Pasternak, as a writer, is not recognized by Soviet writers and progressive writers in other countries.

Boris Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1958. In official Soviet circles, the award of the Pasternak Prize was perceived negatively and resulted in persecution of the writer, under the threat of deprivation of citizenship and expulsion from the USSR, Pasternak was forced to refuse the Nobel Prize.

In 1964, French writer and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre refused the Nobel Prize in Literature. In his statement, in addition to personal reasons for refusing the prize, he also indicated that the Nobel Prize had become "Western supreme cultural authority" and expressed regret that the prize had not been awarded to Sholokhov and that "the only Soviet work that received the award was a book published abroad and banned in their native country". The refusal of the prize and Sartre's statement predetermined the choice of the Nobel Committee the following year.

In 1965, Sholokhov received the Nobel Prize in Literature "for the artistic power and integrity of the epic about the Don Cossacks at a turning point for Russia." Sholokhov is the only Soviet writer who received the Nobel Prize with the consent of the USSR leadership. Mikhail Sholokhov did not bow to Gustavus Adolf VI, who presented the prize. According to some sources, this was done on purpose, with the words: “We, the Cossacks, do not bow to anyone. Here in front of the people - please, but I will not be in front of the king and that's it ... ".

In 2016, the Swedish Academy published a list of 90 nominees for the 1965 Prize on its website. It turned out that the academicians were discussing the idea of ​​sharing the prize between Anna Akhmatova and Mikhail Sholokhov.

Sholokhov vs. Sinyavsky and Daniel

In 1966, he spoke at the XXIII Congress of the CPSU and spoke about the process of Sinyavsky and Daniel:

Get caught by these thugs with a black conscience in the memorable 20s, when they were judged not based on strictly delineated articles of the criminal code, but guided by revolutionary legal consciousness ... (stormy applause)… Oh, these werewolves would have received the wrong measure of punishment! (stormy applause). And here, you see, they are still discussing the severity of the sentence! I would also like to address foreign defenders of libelists: do not worry, dear ones, for the safety of our criticism. We support and develop criticism, and it sounds sharp at our current congress as well. But slander is not criticism, but dirt from a puddle - not paint from an artist's palette!

This statement made the figure of Sholokhov odious for some part of the creative intelligentsia in the USSR and in the West.

Sholokhov M.A. vs. Solzhenitsyn, Sakharov, 1973

• Sholokhov M. A. signed the Letter of a group of Soviet writers to the editors of the newspaper Pravda on August 31, 1973 about Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov.

Last years

Until the end of his days he lived in his house in Vyoshenskaya (nowadays a museum). He transferred the Stalin Prize to the Defense Fund, the Lenin Prize for the novel "Virgin Soil Upturned" was transferred to the disposal of the Karginsky Village Council of the Bazkovsky District of the Rostov Region for the construction of a new school, the Nobel Prize - for the construction of a school in Vyoshenskaya. He was fond of hunting and fishing. Since the 1960s, he has actually moved away from literature. The writer died of laryngeal cancer on February 21, 1984. Mikhail Sholokhov was buried in the village of Veshenskaya on the banks of the Don, but not in the cemetery, but in the courtyard of the house in which he lived.

Membership in organizations

• VKP(b) since 1932, delegate of the XVIII-XXVI congresses;
• Central Committee of the CPSU since 1961;
• Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR 1-10 convocations (since 1937);
• full member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1939).

Awards and prizes

• Lenin Prize (1960) - for the novel "Virgin Soil Upturned" (1932-1960).
• Stalin Prize of the first degree (1941) - for the novel Quiet Flows the Don (1928-1940).
• Nobel Prize in Literature (1965) - "For the artistic power and integrity of the epic about the Don Cossacks at a turning point for Russia."
• International Peace Prize in the field of culture of the World Peace Council.
• Sofia International Literary Prize.
• international award "Lotus" of writers from Asia and Africa.
• twice Hero of Socialist Labor (1967, 1980).
• six orders of Lenin (1939, 1955, 1965, 1967, 1975, 1980).
• Order of the October Revolution (1972).
• Order of the Patriotic War, 1st class (1945).
• Medal "For the Defense of Moscow"
• Medal "For the Defense of Stalingrad"
• Medal "For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945"
• Medal "Twenty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945"
• Medal "Thirty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945"
• Medal "For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945"
• gold medal named after Alexander Fadeev (1972).
• Order "George Dimitrov" (1975) (Bulgaria).
• Order "Cyril and Methodius" I degree (1975) (Bulgaria).
• Order of the Star of Friendship of Peoples, 1st class (German Democratic Republic).
• Order of Sukhe-Bator (Mongolia).
• Honorary Doctor of Science from the Rostov State University, the Karl Marx University of Leipzig, the University of St. Andrews (Scotland).

Memory

Lilac "Sholokhov"

memorial museums

• State Museum-Reserve of M. A. Sholokhov (Rostov Region)
• Memorial Museum of M.A. Sholokhov in Western Kazakhstan
• House-Museum of M. A. Sholokhov in Nikolaevsk, Nikolaevsky District (Volgograd Region)

In philately

Stamps







The problem of text authorship

The problem of the authorship of texts published under the name of Sholokhov was raised as early as the 1920s, when Quiet Don was first published. The main reason for the doubts of opponents in the authorship of Sholokhov (both then and at a later time) was the unusually young age of the author, who created, and in a very short time, such a grandiose work, and especially the circumstances of his biography: the novel demonstrates a good acquaintance with the life of the Don Cossacks , knowledge of many areas on the Don, the events of the First World War and the Civil War that took place when Sholokhov was a child and teenager. To this argument, the researchers answer that the novel was not written by Sholokhov at the age of 20, but was written for almost fifteen years. The author spent a lot of time in the archives, often communicating with people who later became the prototypes of the characters in the novel. According to some reports, the prototype of Grigory Melekhov was Kharlampy Yermakov, a colleague of Sholokhov's father, one of those who led the Vyoshensky uprising; he spent a lot of time with the future writer, talking about himself and what he had seen. Another argument of opponents is the low, according to some critics, artistic level of Sholokhov's "Don Tales" that preceded the novel.

In 1929, at the direction of I.V. Stalin, a commission was formed under the leadership of M.I. Ulyanova, which investigated this issue and confirmed the authorship of M.A. Sholokhov on the basis of the manuscripts of the novel provided by him. Subsequently, the manuscript was lost and was discovered only in 1999. Until 1999, the main argument of supporters of Sholokhov's sole authorship was considered to be a draft autograph of a significant part of the text of The Quiet Flows the Don (more than a thousand pages), discovered in 1987 and stored at the Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Supporters of Sholokhov's authorship have always argued that this manuscript testifies to the author's careful work on the novel, and the previously unknown history of the text explains the errors and contradictions in the novel noted by their opponents. In addition, in the 1970s, the Norwegian Slavist and mathematician Geir Hjetso conducted a computer analysis of the indisputable texts of Sholokhov, on the one hand, and The Quiet Flows the Don, on the other, and came to the conclusion that Sholokhov was the author. A weighty argument was also that the action of the novel takes place in Sholokhov's native places, and many of the heroes of the book have as their prototypes people whom Sholokhov knew personally. In 1999, after many years of searching, the Institute of World Literature. A. M. Gorky of the Russian Academy of Sciences managed to find the manuscripts of the 1st and 2nd books of The Quiet Flows the Don, which were considered lost. The three examinations carried out: graphological, textual and identification, certified the authenticity of the manuscript, its belonging to its time and with scientific validity solved the problem of the authorship of The Quiet Flows the Don, after which the supporters of Sholokhov's authorship considered their position unconditionally proven. In 2006, a facsimile edition of the manuscript was released, giving everyone the opportunity to verify the true authorship of the novel.

Nevertheless, a number of supporters of the version of plagiarism, based on their own analysis of the texts, remained unconvinced. It boils down to the fact that Sholokhov, apparently, found the manuscript of an unknown white Cossack and revised it, since the original would not have passed the Bolshevik censorship and, perhaps, the manuscript was still “raw”. Thus, Sholokhov created his own manuscript, but on someone else's material.

However, this position, based today only on assumptions, is convincingly refuted by the conducted examinations: the “rewritten” and the author’s texts are fundamentally different (in the author’s work, work on the manuscript, on artistic images is visible; the “rewritten” text or even “translated” largely loses any signs of the author's work, it is noticeable, often visually, obvious schematism and continuity of presentation, the absence of copyright corrections, and on the other hand, semantic and artistic unevenness, different quality of individual parts of the text). Based on the expertise, therefore, it can be said with sufficient certainty whether the text is original, artistically integral and has acquired independent value, or whether it has become a compilation of fragments and images of another work.

List of works

• Don stories
• Azure steppe
• Quiet Don
• upturned virgin soil
• They fought for their country
• The Science of Hate
• Word about Motherland
• The fate of man

Collected works consists of 8 volumes.

He also composed a poem for children, which he read at the New Year tree in Vyoshenskaya, it was written down by the secretary of the Vyoshensky district party committee P.K. According to Anatoly Kalinin, "the author of Mukha-Tsokotukha would also envy her."

Screen adaptation of works

• "Quiet Flows the Don" (1930) - directors Olga Preobrazhenskaya, Ivan Pravov.
• "Quiet Flows the Don" (1958) - based on the novel of the same name. Director and scriptwriter - Sergey Gerasimov.
• "Quiet Flows the Don" (1994) - directed by Sergei Bondarchuk.
• "Quiet Flows the Don" (2015) - series, directed by Sergei Ursulyak.
• The fate of man (Mosfilm, 1959) - based on the story of the same name. Script writer - Lukin, Yuri Borisovich, director Sergei Bondarchuk.
• Virgin Soil Upturned (1959-1961) - based on the novel of the same name.
• Nakhalenok (1961) - based on the story of the same name. Director - Evgeny Karelov.
• When the Cossacks Cry (1963) - based on stories from the Don Stories cycle. Director - Evgeny Morgunov.
• Donskaya tale (1964) - based on the stories "Shibalkovo seed" and "Birthmark". Director - Vladimir Fetin.
• In the azure steppe (film almanac in 3 parts) - based on early stories.
  • Kolovert (1970) (ch. 1)
  • Wormhole (1970) (ch. 2)
  • Food Commissioner (Mosfilm, 1970) (part 3)
• "The Foal" (1959) - a short film based on the story of M. A. Sholokhov, dir. Vladimir Fetin.
• "They fought for the Motherland" (1975) - based on the novel of the same name - dir. Sergei Bondarchuk.
• Born free (2005) - a TV movie based on the story of M. A. Sholokhov "The Foal", dir. Elena Lenskaya.

(1905-1984) Soviet writer

Mikhail Sholokhov is a famous Soviet prose writer, the author of many stories, novels and novels about the life of the Don Cossacks. For the scale and artistic power of the works describing the life of the Cossack villages in a difficult critical period, the writer was awarded the Nobel Prize. The creative achievements of Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov were highly appreciated in their own country. He twice received the title of Hero of Socialist Labor, became the laureate of the most significant Stalin and Lenin Prizes in the Soviet Union.

Childhood and youth

Mikhail Sholokhov's father was a wealthy merchant's son, he bought up cattle, rented land from the Cossacks and grew wheat, at one time he was the manager of a steam mill. The writer's mother was 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 never became a native, and goes to Alexander Sholokhov.

Mikhail is born in 1905. An illegitimate boy is recorded in the name of the official husband of the mother. This well-known 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 it will be possible to find echoes of a personal tragedy.

M.A. Sholokhov received the surname of his real father only after the wedding of his parents in 1912. Two years before that, the family had left for the village of Karginskaya. The biography of this period contains brief data on Sholokhov's initial education. At first, a local teacher regularly studied with the boy. After the preparatory course, Mikhail continued his studies at the gymnasium in Boguchar and completed the 4th grade. Classes had to be abandoned after the arrival of German soldiers in the city.

1920-1923

This period is quite difficult not only for the country, but also for the future writer. Some of the events that took place in Sholokhov's life during these years are not mentioned in any short 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 the intervention of his father. He made a rather large amount as a deposit and brought to court a new birth certificate, in which the age of his son was reduced by more than 2 years. As a minor, the young man was sentenced to corrective labor for one year and sent under escort to the Moscow region. To the colony M.A. Sholokhov never made it, and later settled in Moscow. From that moment on, a new stage began in Sholokhov's biography.

The beginning of the creative path

The first attempts to publish his early works fall 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 betrothal, but due to the lack of the necessary recommendation from the Komsomol organization and data on work experience, it was not possible to enter the workers' faculty. The writer had to be content with small temporary earnings.

M. A. Sholokhov participates in the work of the literary circle "Young Guard", is engaged in self-education. With the support of an old friend L.G. Mirumov, an experienced Bolshevik and a staff member of the GPU, in 1923 the first works of Sholokhov saw the light: “Test”, “Three”, “Inspector General”.

In 1924, the publication "Young Leninist" printed on its pages the first story from the collection of Don stories released later. 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.

The most significant event in Sholokhov's creative biography was the publication of the novel Quiet Flows the Don. The first two volumes were printed in 1928. In several storylines, M. A. Sholokhov shows in detail the life of the Cossacks during the First World War, and then the Civil War.

Despite the fact that the protagonist of the novel, Grigory Melekhov, never accepted the revolution, the work was approved by Stalin himself, who gave permission for printing. Later, the novel was translated into foreign languages ​​and brought Sholokhov Mikhail Aleksandrovich worldwide popularity.

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 sub-kulakists, the created images of activists 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 quite often took place in relation to ordinary residents of Cossack villages. The general acceptance of the idea of ​​creating collective farms was the reason for the approval and appreciation of Sholokhov's work.

After some time, "Virgin Soil Upturned" is introduced for compulsory study in the school curriculum, and from that moment Sholokhov's biography is studied on a par with the biographies of the classics.

After a high assessment of 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 another transformation of a doubter in the ideals of the revolution into a "solid 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 the stanitsa ataman. Arriving to woo one daughter, Mikhail Sholokhov, on the advice of his future father-in-law, marries her sister, Maria. Maria graduated from high school and at that time taught at an elementary school.

In 1926 Sholokhov became a father for the first time. Subsequently, 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 brief 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 Flows the Don, and everything written after was much weaker in artistic skill than even the earliest works. The only exception was the novel "They Fought for the Motherland", which was never completed by the author.

In the post-war period, Mikhail Sholokhov was mainly engaged in journalistic activities. The only strong work that has replenished the author's creative biography is "The Fate of a 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 allegations of plagiarism.

“Quiet Flows the Don” attracted particular attention. Sholokhov wrote it in a very short time for such a large-scale work, and the biography of the author, who was a child at the time of the events described, also aroused suspicion. Among the arguments against Mikhail Alexandrovich 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. The members of the commission examined the manuscript, checked the biography of the author and established facts confirming the work on the work.

Among other things, it was established that Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov spent a long time in the archives, and the biography of a real colleague of his father, who was one of the leaders of the uprising depicted in the book, helped create one of the main storylines.

Despite the fact that Sholokhov was subjected 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 all the variety of human emotions of ordinary workers, residents of small Cossack villages.

Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov. Born on May 11 (24), 1905 on the Kruzhilin farm in the Donetsk District of the Don Cossack Region (now the Sholokhov District of the Rostov Region) - died on February 21, 1984 in the village of Vyoshenskaya, Rostov Region. Russian Soviet writer, screenwriter. Laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1965 - "for the artistic power and integrity of the epic about the Don Cossacks at a turning point for Russia"), the Stalin Prize (1941), the Lenin Prize (1960). Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1939). Twice Hero of Socialist Labor (1967, 1980). Colonel (1943).

M. A. Sholokhov was born on May 11 (24), 1905 on the Kruzhilin farm of the village of Vyoshenskaya (now the Kruzhilin farm of the Sholokhov district of the Rostov region). At birth, he received a surname - Kuznetsov, which he changed in 1912 to the surname Sholokhov.

Father - Alexander Mikhailovich Sholokhov (1865-1925) - a native of the Ryazan province, did not belong to the Cossacks, was a "shibai" (cattle buyer), sowed bread on the purchased Cossack land, served as a clerk in a commercial enterprise of a farm scale, manager at a steam mill and etc. Father's grandfather was a merchant of the third guild, originally from the city of Zaraysk, he moved with his large family to the Upper Don in the mid-1870s, bought a house with a farmstead and started buying up grain.

Mother - Anastasia Danilovna Chernikova (Chernyak) (1871-1942) - a Cossack mother, the daughter of a Little Russian peasant-migrant to the Don, a former serf of the Chernigov province. For a long time she was in the service of the panorama Yasenevka. The orphan was forcibly married off by the landowner Popova, for whom she served, to the son of the stanitsa ataman Kuznetsov. But later she left her husband and went to Alexander Sholokhov. Their son Mikhail was born illegitimate and was recorded in the name of his mother's official husband, Kuznetsov. Only after the death of the official husband, in 1912, the boy's parents were able to get married, and Mikhail received the surname Sholokhov.

In 1910, the family left the Kruzhilin farm: Alexander Mikhailovich entered the service of a merchant in the village of Karginskaya. The father invited a local teacher, Timofey Timofeevich Mrikhin, to teach the boy to read and write.

In 1914 he studied for one year in Moscow in the preparatory class of the men's gymnasium.

From 1915 to 1918, Mikhail studied at the gymnasium in the city of Boguchar, Voronezh province. He graduated from the 4th grade of the gymnasium (sitting at the same desk with Konstantin Ivanovich Kargin, the future writer who wrote the story "Bakhchevnik" in the spring of 1930).

Before the German troops arrived in the city, according to Mikhail, he dropped out of school and went home to the farm.

In 1920, the family moved to the village of Karginskaya (after the advent of Soviet power), where Alexander Mikhailovich received the position of head of the procurement office of the Donprodkom, and his son Mikhail became the clerk of the village revolutionary committee.

In 1920-1921 he lived with his family in the village of Karginskaya. After completing the Rostov tax courses, he was appointed to the position of food inspector in the village of Bukanovskaya, then joined the food detachment, participated in the food appraisal. In 1920, the food detachment, headed by 15-year-old (17.5-year-old) Sholokhov, was captured by Makhno. Then he thought that he would be shot, but he was released.

On August 31, 1922, while working as a stanitsa tax inspector, M.A. Sholokhov was arrested and was in the district center under investigation. He was sentenced to be shot.

“I led a cool line, and the time was cool; I was a helluva commissar, I was tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal for abuse of power ...- the writer later said. - For two days he waited for death ... And then they came and released him ... ". Until September 19, 1922, Sholokhov was in custody.

His father gave him a large bail and bailed him home until the trial. The parents brought a new metric to the court, and he was released as a minor (according to the new metric, the age decreased by 2.5 years). This was already in March 1923.

Then the “troikas” were judged, the sentences were severe. It was not difficult to believe that he was a minor, since Mikhail was short and looked like a boy. The execution was replaced by another punishment - the tribunal took into account his minority. He was given one year of corrective labor in a juvenile colony and sent to Bolshevo (near Moscow).

In Moscow, Sholokhov tried to continue his education, and also tried his hand at writing. However, it was not possible to enter the preparatory courses of the workers' faculty due to the lack of work experience and the direction of the Komsomol required for admission. According to one source, he worked as a loader, handyman, and bricklayer. According to others, he worked in the house management of the workers' housing-construction cooperative "Take an example!", which was chaired by L. G. Mirumov (Mirumyan).

He was engaged in self-education, took part in the work of the literary group "Young Guard", attended training sessions conducted by V. B. Shklovsky, O. M. Brik, N. N. Aseev. Joined the Komsomol. Active assistance in arranging the daily life of M. A. Sholokhov in Moscow and in promoting the first literary works with his autograph was provided by a staff member of the ECU of the GPU, a Bolshevik with pre-revolutionary experience - Leon Galustovich Mirumov (Mirumyan), whom M. A. Sholokhov met in the village of Vyoshenskaya even before arriving in Moscow.

In September 1923, signed “Mikh. Sholokh" in the Komsomol newspaper "Youthful Pravda" ("Young Leninist") (now - "Moskovsky Komsomolets") a feuilleton was printed - "Trial", a month later a second feuilleton appeared - "Three" and then the third "Inspector".

In December 1923, M.A. Sholokhov returned to Karginskaya, and then to the village of Bukanovskaya, where he wooed Lydia Gromoslavskaya, one of the daughters of the former stanitsa ataman Pyotr Yakovlevich Gromoslavsky. But the former chieftain said: "Take Mary, and I will make a man out of you." On January 11, 1924, M. A. Sholokhov married his eldest daughter, Maria Petrovna Gromoslavskaya (1901-1992), who worked as an elementary school teacher (in 1918, M. P. Gromoslavskaya, studied at the Ust-Medveditskaya gymnasium, the director of which at that time consisted of F. D. Kryukov).

The first story "Beasts" (later "Food Commissar"), sent by M. A. Sholokhov in the almanac "Young Guard", was not accepted by the editors. December 14, 1924 in the newspaper "Young Leninist" published a story "Mole", who opened the cycle of Don stories: “Shepherd”, “Ilyukha”, “Foal”, “Azure Steppe”, “Family Man”, “Mortal Enemy”, “Two-wife”, etc. They were published in Komsomol periodicals, and then amounted to three collections published one after another: "Don stories", "Azure Steppe" (both - 1926) and "About Kolchak, nettles and other things" (1927).

After returning to Karginskaya, the eldest daughter Svetlana (1926, st. Karginskaya) was born in the family, then sons Alexander (1930-1990, Rostov-on-Don), Mikhail (1935, Moscow), daughter Maria (1938, Vyoshenskaya).

In 1958 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. In official Soviet circles, the award of the Pasternak Prize was perceived negatively and resulted in persecution of the writer, under the threat of deprivation of citizenship and expulsion from the USSR, Pasternak was forced to refuse the Nobel Prize.

In 1964, French writer and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre refused the Nobel Prize in Literature. In his statement, in addition to personal reasons for refusing the prize, he also indicated that the Nobel Prize had become “the highest cultural authority in the West” and expressed regret that the prize was not awarded to Sholokhov and that “the only Soviet work that received the prize was a book published abroad and banned in the home country. The refusal of the prize and Sartre's statement predetermined the choice of the Nobel Committee the following year.

In 1965, Sholokhov received the Nobel Prize in Literature "for the artistic power and integrity of the epic about the Don Cossacks at a turning point for Russia."

Sholokhov is the only Soviet writer who received the Nobel Prize with the consent of the USSR leadership. Mikhail Sholokhov did not bow to Gustavus Adolf VI, who presented the prize. According to some sources, this was done on purpose, with the words: “We, the Cossacks, do not bow to anyone. Here in front of the people - please, but I will not be in front of the king and that's it ... ".

Family of Mikhail Sholokhov:

Family of M. A. Sholokhov (April 1941). From left to right: Maria Petrovna with her son Misha, Alexander, Svetlana, Mikhail Sholokhov with Masha.

1923, December. Departure of M. A. Sholokhov from Moscow to the village of Karginskaya, to his parents, and together with them to Bukanovskaya, where his bride Lidia Gromoslavskaya and future wife Maria Petrovna Gromoslavskaya lived (since their father Pyotr Yakovlevich Gromoslavsky insisted on the marriage of M. A. Sholokhov on the eldest daughter Maria).

1924, January 11th. The wedding of M. A. and M. P. Sholokhov in the Church of the Intercession of the village of Bukanovskaya. Registration of marriage in the Podtelkovsky registry office (village Kumylzhenskaya).

1942, June. During the bombing of the village of Vyoshenskaya in the courtyard of the house of M. A. Sholokhov, the writer's mother died.

Bibliography of Mikhail Sholokhov:

"Mole" (story)
"Don stories"
Quiet Don
"Virgin Soil Upturned"
"They fought for their country"
"Destiny of Man"
"The Science of Hate"
"Word of the Motherland"

The problem of the authorship of texts published under the name of Sholokhov was raised as early as the 1920s, when Quiet Don was first published. The main reason for the doubts of opponents in the authorship of Sholokhov (both then and at a later time) was the unusually young age of the author, who created, and in a very short time, such a grandiose work, and especially the circumstances of his biography: the novel demonstrates a good acquaintance with the life of the Don Cossacks , knowledge of many areas on the Don, the events of the First World War and the Civil War that took place when Sholokhov was a child and teenager. To this argument, the researchers answer that the novel was not written by Sholokhov at the age of 20, but was written for almost fifteen years.

The author spent a lot of time in the archives, often communicating with people who later became the prototypes of the characters in the novel. According to some reports, the prototype of Grigory Melekhov was Kharlampy Yermakov, a colleague of Sholokhov's father, one of those who led the Vyoshensky uprising; he spent a lot of time with the future writer, talking about himself and what he had seen.

Another argument of opponents is the low, according to some critics, artistic level of Sholokhov's "Don Tales" that preceded the novel.

In 1929, on instructions, a commission was formed under the leadership of M. I. Ulyanova, which investigated this issue and confirmed the authorship of M. A. Sholokhov on the basis of the manuscripts of the novel provided by him. Subsequently, the manuscript was lost and was discovered only in 1999.

Until 1999, the main argument of supporters of Sholokhov's sole authorship was considered to be a draft autograph of a significant part of the text of The Quiet Flows the Don (more than a thousand pages), discovered in 1987 and stored at the Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Supporters of Sholokhov's authorship have always argued that this manuscript testifies to the author's careful work on the novel, and the previously unknown history of the text explains the errors and contradictions in the novel noted by their opponents.

In addition, in the 1970s, the Norwegian Slavist and mathematician Geir Hjetso conducted a computer analysis of the indisputable texts of Sholokhov, on the one hand, and The Quiet Flows the Don, on the other, and came to the conclusion that Sholokhov was the author. A weighty argument was also that the action of the novel takes place in Sholokhov's native places, and many of the heroes of the book have as their prototypes people whom Sholokhov knew personally.

In 1999, after many years of searching, the Institute of World Literature. A. M. Gorky of the Russian Academy of Sciences managed to find the manuscripts of the 1st and 2nd books of The Quiet Flows the Don, which were considered lost. The three examinations carried out: graphological, textual and identification, certified the authenticity of the manuscript, its belonging to its time and with scientific validity solved the problem of the authorship of The Quiet Flows the Don, after which the supporters of Sholokhov's authorship considered their position unconditionally proven.

In 2006, a facsimile edition of the manuscript was released, giving everyone the opportunity to verify the true authorship of the novel. Nevertheless, a number of supporters of the version of plagiarism, based on their own analysis of the texts, remained unconvinced. It boils down to the fact that Sholokhov, apparently, found the manuscript of an unknown white Cossack and revised it, since the original would not have passed the Bolshevik censorship and, perhaps, the manuscript was still “raw”. Thus, Sholokhov created his own manuscript, but on someone else's material.

However, this position, based today only on assumptions, is convincingly refuted by the conducted examinations: the “rewritten” and the author’s texts are fundamentally different (in the author’s work, work on the manuscript, on artistic images is visible; the “rewritten” text or even “translated” largely loses any signs of the author's work, it is noticeable, often visually, obvious schematism and continuity of presentation, the absence of copyright corrections, and on the other hand, semantic and artistic unevenness, different quality of individual parts of the text). Based on the expertise, therefore, it can be said with sufficient certainty whether the text is original, artistically integral and has acquired independent value, or whether it has become a compilation of fragments and images of another work.