Sholokhov Mikhail Alexandrovich- the great Russian writer, Nobel Prize winner, deputy, Stalin Prize winner, academician, twice Hero of Socialist Labor, author of novels " Quiet Don", "Upturned virgin soil"an unfinished epic" They fought for their country".

Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov was born on May 11 (24), 1905 on the farm Kruzhilin of the village of Vyoshenskaya (now the Sholokhov district of the Rostov region) into a peasant family. Mikhail Sholokhov studied at a parochial school, then at a gymnasium, graduated from four classes when the revolution and civil war began.

In October 1922 he came to Moscow to study.

In 1923 The newspaper "Youthful Truth" publishes the first feuilleton "Trial" signed "M. Sholokhov". In 1924 his first story was published. "Mole".

January 11, 1924 M. A. Sholokhov married M. P. Gromoslavskaya, the daughter of the former stanitsa ataman. In this marriage, the writer had four children.

In 1926 compilations are coming out "Don stories" And "Azure steppe". At the end of 1926 he began to write a novel "Quiet Don".

In 1932 a novel by M. A. Sholokhov is published "Virgin ground raised.

In the 1930s Sholokhov finishing the third and fourth books "Quiet Don".

During the Great Patriotic War, Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov was a war correspondent, began publishing chapters from the new novel "They fought for their country".

In the 1950s, he worked on a sequel to the novel "They fought for their country" published a story "Destiny of Man". Sholokhov's second book was published in 1960. "Virgin Soil Upturned".

In 1965 Sholokhov M.A. Nobel Prize awarded for novel "Quiet Don".

Biography of M.A. Sholokhov

The scientific biography of M. A. Sholokhov has not yet been written. The available research leaves many blank spots in the history of his life. Official Soviet science often hushed up many of the events that the writer was a witness or participant in, and he himself, judging by the memoirs of his contemporaries, did not like to advertise the details of his life. In addition, in the literature about Sholokhov, attempts were often made to give an unambiguous assessment of his personality and work. Moreover, both the canonization of Sholokhov in the Soviet period, and the desire to overthrow him from the erected pedestal in the works of the 80-90s led to the fact that in the minds of the mass reader there was a simplified, and most often distorted idea of ​​​​the author of The Quiet Flows the Don and Virgin Soil Upturned. Meanwhile, Sholokhov is an extremely controversial figure. A contemporary of the first Russian revolution, who began his career during the formation of Soviet literature and passed away shortly before the collapse of totalitarianism in Russia, he was truly the son of his age. The contradictions of his personality were largely a reflection of the contradictions of the Soviet era itself, the events of which to this day give rise to polar assessments, both in science and in public opinion.

M. A. Sholokhov was born on May 24, 1905 in the Kruzhilin village of the village of Veshenskaya in the Donetsk District of the Don Cossack Region, although this date probably needs to be clarified.

The writer's father, Alexander Mikhailovich (1865-1925), was a native of the Ryazan province, repeatedly changed professions: "He was consistently" shibay "(cattle buyer), sowed bread on purchased Cossack land, served as a clerk in a commercial enterprise on a farm scale, was the manager of a steam mills, etc.

Mother, Anastasia Danilovna (1871-1942), "half-Cossack, half-peasant", served as a maid. In her youth, she was married against her will to the Cossack-ataman S. Kuznetsov, but, having met with A. M. Sholokhov, she left him. The future writer was born illegitimate and until 1912 bore the name of his mother's first husband, while having all the Cossack privileges. Only when Alexander Mikhailovich and Anastasia Danilovna got married, and his father adopted him, Sholokhov acquired his real surname, while losing his belonging to the Cossack class, as the son of a tradesman, that is, "non-resident".

In order to give his son an initial education, the father hired a home teacher T. T. Mrikhin, in 1912 he sent his son to the Karginsky parochial school for men in the second grade. In 1914, he was taken to Moscow because of an eye disease (the clinic of Dr. Snegirev, where Sholokhov was treated, will be described in the novel Quiet Flows the Don) and sends him to the preparatory class of the Moscow Gymnasium No. G. Shelaputin. In 1915, his parents transferred Mikhail to the Bogucharov gymnasium, but his studies were interrupted by revolutionary events. It was not possible to complete his education at the Veshenskaya mixed gymnasium, where Sholokhov entered in 1918. Due to the outbreak of hostilities around the village, he was forced to interrupt his education, finishing only four classes.

From 1919 until the end of the Civil War, Sholokhov lived on the Don, in the villages of Elanskaya and Karginskaya, engulfed by the Upper Don uprising, that is, he was at the center of those dramatic events that will be described in the final books of The Quiet Don.

Since 1920, when Soviet power was finally established on the Don, Mikhail Sholokhov, despite his young years, and he was 15 years old, worked as a teacher for the elimination of illiteracy.

In May 1922, Sholokhov completed short-term food inspection courses in Rostov and was sent to the village of Bukanovskaya as a tax inspector. He was tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal for abuse of power. By a special meeting of the revolutionary tribunal "for a crime in office" Sholokhov was sentenced to death. For two days he waited for inevitable death, but fate was pleased to spare Sholokhov. According to some reports, it was then that he indicated 1905 as the year of birth in order to hide his real age and pass himself off as a minor, while in fact he was born a year or two earlier.

In the autumn of 1922, Sholokhov arrived in Moscow with the intention of entering the workers' faculty. However, he did not have any factory experience or a Komsomol voucher, which was required for admission. Getting a job was also not easy, since Sholokhov had not mastered any profession by that time. The labor exchange could not provide him with only the most unskilled work, so for the first time he was forced to work as a loader at the Yaroslavl railway station and paving cobblestone pavements. Later, he received a referral to the position of an accountant in the housing department on Krasnaya Presnya. All this time, Sholokhov was engaged in self-education and, on the recommendation of the novice writer Kudashev, was accepted into the Young Guard literary group. On September 19, 1923, Sholokhov made his literary debut: his feuilleton "Test" appeared in the newspaper, signed by M. Sholokhov.

On January 11, 1924, M.A. Sholokhov married the daughter of the former stanitsa ataman, Maria Petrovna Gromoslavskaya (1902-1992), tying her fate for sixty long years. It was 1924 that can be considered the beginning of the professional activity of Sholokhov the writer. On December 14, the first of Sholokhov’s Don stories, Mole, appeared in the newspaper “Young Sloth”, on February 14 the story “Food Commissar” was published in the same newspaper, after which “Shepherd” (February) and “Shibalkovo Seed” were rapidly published one after another , "Ilyukha", "Alyoshka" (March), "Bakhchevnik" (April), "Way-path" (April-May), "Nakhalenok" (May-June), "Family Man", "Kolovert" (June) , "Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic" (July), "Crooked Stitch" (November) In the same period, Sholokhov became a member of the RAPP.

Even while working on the Don Tales, M. Sholokhov decided to write a story about the chairman of the Don Council of People's Commissars F. G. Podtelkov and his colleague, secretary of the Don Cossack Military Revolutionary Committee M. V. Kryoshlykov (it was this unwritten story that he probably wanted to give the name "Donshchina", which many researchers mistakenly took for the original title of the novel "Quiet Flows the Don"). Gradually, Sholokhov comes to the conclusion that "it is not necessary to write a story, but a novel with a wide display of the world war, then it will become clear what united the front-line Cossacks with the front-line soldiers." Only when the writer managed to collect numerous memoirs of participants in the First World War and rich archival material, he began work on a novel, which was called The Quiet Flows the Don.

“The work of collecting materials for the Quiet Don,” said Sholokhov, “went in two directions: firstly, collecting memories, stories, facts, details from living participants in the imperialist and civil wars, conversations, questioning, checking all plans and ideas ; secondly, the painstaking study of specially military literature, the development of military operations, and numerous memoirs. Familiarization with foreign, even White Guard sources.

The earliest manuscript of the novel dates from the autumn of 1925 and tells about the events of the summer of 1917 related to the participation of the Cossacks in Kornilov's campaign against Petrograd. “I wrote 5-6 printed sheets. When he wrote, he felt that something was wrong, - Sholokhov later said. - For the reader it will not be clear why the Cossacks took part in the suppression of the revolution. What are these Cossacks? What is the Don Cossack Region? Doesn't it come out to readers as a kind of terra incognito? So I quit my job. Began to think about a broader novel. When the plan matured, he began to collect material. Knowledge of Cossack life helped. The chapters about the Kornilov region written by that time later became the plot basis for the second volume of the novel. “I started again and started from the Cossack antiquity, from the years that preceded the First World War. He wrote three parts of the novel, which make up the first volume of The Quiet Flows the Don. And when the first volume was finished, and it was necessary to write further - Petrograd, the Kornilov region - I returned to the previous manuscript and used it for the second volume. It was a pity to leave the work already done. However, before the writer returned to work on the novel, almost a year passed, filled with both sad (the death of his father at the end of 1925) and joyful events.

In 1925, the publishing house "New Moscow" published a separate book "Don stories". In 1926, a second collection of short stories appeared - "Azure Steppe" (in 1931, Sholokhov's early stories will be published in one book "Azure Steppe. Don Stories"). In February 1926, the Sholokhovs had a daughter, Svetlana.

At this time, the writer's thoughts are connected with the "Quiet Don". One of the few evidences of his work on the novel during this period is a letter from Kharlampiy Vasilyevich Ermakov dated April 6, 1926: “Dear comrade. Ermakov! I need to get additional information from you regarding the era of 1919. I hope that you will not refuse me the courtesy to communicate this information with my arrival from Moscow. I suppose to be in your house in May - June of this year. This information relates to the details of the V-Don uprising. Don Kharlampy Ermakov became one of the prototypes of Grigory Melekhov (in the earliest manuscript of the novel, the hero is named Abram Ermakov).

In autumn, Sholokhov and his family moved to Veshenskaya, where he plunged into work on the novel. The first lines of the first volume were written on November 8, 1926. The work on the book was surprisingly intense. Having completed the draft version of the first part, Sholokhov began work on the second in November. By the end of the summer, work on the first volume was completed, and in the autumn Sholokhov took the manuscript to Moscow, to the Oktyabr magazine and the Moscow Writer publishing house. In the magazine, the novel was recognized as “everyday writing” and devoid of political sharpness, but thanks to the active intervention of A. Serafimovich, it was already in the first four issues in 1928 that the first book of the novel was published. And in 5-10 issues for the same year - and the second book of "The Quiet Flows the Don". In the same 1928, the first book of the novel was published first in the Roman-gazeta, then as a separate edition in the Moscow Worker. The manuscript of the novel, not yet published in October, was recommended for publication by the head of the publishing department, Evgenia Grigoryevna Levitskaya. There, in the publishing house, in 1927, the twenty-two-year-old Sholokhov met with Levitskaya, who was a quarter of a century older than him. This meeting was destined to be the beginning of a strong friendship. Levitskaya more than once helped Sholokhov in difficult moments of his life. Sholokhov took an active part in her fate and the fate of her loved ones. In 1956, Sholokhov's story "The Fate of a Man" will be published with a dedication: "Evgenia Grigoryevna Levitskaya, a member of the CPSU since 1903."

And difficult days began for Sholokhov immediately after the publication of the first volume of the novel. E. G. Levitskaya writes about this in her notes: “T. D." first appeared in a magazine. "October", and then came out at the end of 1928 as a separate book ... My God, what an orgy of slander and fabrications arose about The Quiet Flows the Don and its author! With serious faces, mysteriously lowering their voices, people seemed to be quite “decent” - writers, critics, not to mention the philistine public, transmitted “reliable” stories: Sholokhov, they say, stole the manuscript from some white officer - the officer’s mother, according to one version, it came to gas. Pravda, or the Central Committee, or the RAPP, and asked for the protection of the rights of her son, who wrote such a wonderful book ... At all literary crossroads, the author of The Quiet Flows the Don was inked and slandered. Poor author, who in 1928 was barely 23 years old! How much courage was needed, how much confidence in one's strength and in one's writing talent, in order to endure all the vulgarities, all the malicious advice and "friendly" instructions of "venerable" writers. I once got to one such “venerable” writer - it turned out to be Berezovsky, who thoughtfully said: “I am an old writer, but I could not write such a book as The Quiet Don ... Can you believe that at 23 years old, without no education, a person could write such a deep, such a psychologically truthful book ...

Already during the publication of the first two books of The Quiet Flows the Don, numerous responses to the novel appeared in the press. Moreover, judgments about him often sounded the most opposite. In 1928, the Rostov magazine On the Rise called the novel a "whole event in literature". A. Lunacharsky wrote in 1929: “Quiet Flows the Don” is a work of exceptional power in terms of the breadth of pictures, knowledge of life and people, in the bitterness of its plot ... This work resembles the best phenomena of Russian literature of all times.” In one of his private letters in 1928, Gorky gave his assessment: “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.” However, most often positive reviews about the novel were based on the conviction of critics about the inevitability of the protagonist's coming to the Bolshevik faith. V. Ermilov, for example, wrote: “Sholokhov looks through the eyes of Melekhov, a man gradually moving towards Bolshevism. The author himself has already done this path ... ". But there were also attacks on the novel. According to the critic M. Meisel, Sholokhov "very often, as it were, admires all this kulak satiety, prosperity, lovingly and sometimes with frank admiration describes the earnestness and inviolability of a strong peasant order with its ritualism, greed, hoarding and other inevitable accessories of inert peasant life." As we can see, the disputes around the novel that arose immediately after the first publications were primarily of an ideological nature.

An extremely difficult fate awaited the third book of the novel. Although already in December 1928 the Rostov newspaper Molot published an excerpt from it, and since January 1929 the publication of the book was published in the magazine Oktyabr (No. 1 - 3), in April the writer was forced to suspend its printing. From spring to August 29th, Sholokhov hardly finds time to study literature, completely immersed in the harsh worries of the first year of collectivization.

In August, the Siberian magazine Nastoyashcheye published an article entitled Why did the White Guards like The Quiet Don? “The task of what class did the proletarian writer Sholokhov fulfill by obscuring the class struggle in the pre-revolutionary countryside? The answer to this question must be given with all clarity and certainty. Having the best subjective intentions, Sholokhov objectively fulfilled the task of the fist ... As a result, Sholokhov's thing became acceptable even for the White Guards.

In the same summer of 1929, another assessment of the novel was made. On July 9, in a letter to the old revolutionary Felix Cohn, Stalin wrote: “The famous writer of our time, Comrade. Sholokhov made a number of gross errors in his Quiet Don and outright incorrect information about Syrtsov, Podtelkov, Krivoshlykov and others, but does it follow from this that The Quiet Don is a good-for-nothing thing that deserves to be withdrawn from sale? True, this letter was published only in 1949 in the 12th volume of the collected works of Stalin, and until that time, apparently, Sholokhov had not known.

Only in the winter of 1930, Sholokhov brought to Moscow the manuscript of the sixth part of The Quiet Flows the Don, leaving it to be read and decided on its fate by the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers. At the end of March, an answer came to Veshenskaya from Fadeev, who then became one of the leaders of the RAPP and the head of the Oktyabr magazine. “Fadeev invites me to make such changes that are unacceptable to me in any way,” Sholokhov reports in a letter to Levitskaya. “He says if I don’t make Gregory mine, then the novel cannot be published. Do you know how I thought the end of Book III. I cannot make Gregory the ultimate Bolshevik.” Not only the image of the protagonist of the novel is subjected to sharp criticism from the RAPP. For example, the story of an old Old Believer about the arbitrariness of Commissar Malkin in the village of Bukanovka (Malkin was alive in 1930 and was in a responsible post) given in chapter XXXIX of the sixth part was not allowed to go into print. The most seditious, from the point of view of those on whom the fate of the book depended, was the depiction of the Veshensky uprising, an event traditionally hushed up in the official Soviet press (until the 1970s, Sholokhov's novel was practically the only book about this event). The most orthodox Rappov leaders considered that the writer, citing the facts of the infringement of the Cossacks of the Upper Don, justifies the uprising. In a letter to Gorky dated July 6, 1931, Sholokhov explains the reasons for the uprising by the excesses that were made in relation to the middle peasant Cossack by representatives of the Soviet authorities, and reports that in his novel he deliberately missed the cases of the most severe reprisals against the Cossacks, which were the direct impetus for the uprising .

In 1930, talk of plagiarism was once again heard in literary circles. The reason for them was the book “Requiem. In memory of L. Andreev ”, where, in particular, a letter dated September 3, 1917 was placed, in which Leonid Andreev informs the writer Sergei Goloushev that, as the editor of the newspaper Russkaya Volya, he rejected his Quiet Don. And although it was about travel notes and everyday essays “From the Quiet Don”, which, having been refused by Andreev, S. Goloushev published in the newspaper “Narodny Vestnik” all in the same September 1917 under the pseudonym Sergey Glagol, disputes over the authorship of the Cossack epic flared up with renewed vigor. In those days, Sholokhov wrote to Serafimovich: “... again there are rumors that I stole The Quiet Don from the critic S. Goloushev, a friend of L. Andreev, and that there is indisputable evidence of this in the book-requiem in memory of L. Andreev, composed by his relatives . The other day I receive this book and a letter from E. G. Levitskaya. There really is such a place in Andreev's letter to S. Goloushev, where he says that he rejected his Quiet Flows the Don. "Quiet Don" Goloushev - to my grief and misfortune - called his travel notes and essays, where the main attention (judging by the letter) is paid to the political moods of the Don people in 1917. The names of Kornilov and Kaledin are often mentioned. This gave my "friends" a pretext to launch a new campaign of slander against me. What should I do, Alexander Serafimovich? I'm really tired of being a "thief".

The need to stand up for fellow countrymen who became victims of collectivization, criticism from the RAPP, a new wave of accusations of plagiarism - all this did not encourage creative work. And although already at the beginning of August 1930, when asked about the end of The Quiet Flows the Don, Sholokhov answered: “I have only tails left,” she intended to bring the seventh part to Moscow at the end of the month, these plans were not destined to come true. Moreover, at this time he was fascinated by a new idea.

The events of today were temporarily overshadowed by the era of the Civil War, and Sholokhov had a desire to write "a story of ten sheets ... from collective farm life." In 1930, work began on the first book of the novel With Sweat and Blood, later called Virgin Soil Upturned.

In the autumn of the same year, Sholokhov, together with A. Vesely and V. Kudashev, went to Sorrento to meet Gorky, but after a three-week “sitting” in Berlin, waiting for a visa from the Mussolini government, the writer returned to his homeland: “It was interesting to see what was being done now at home, on the Don. From the end of 1930 to the spring of 1932, Sholokhov was hard at work on Virgin Soil Upturned and Quiet Don, finally concentrating on the idea that the third book of The Quiet Don would be entirely composed of the sixth part, which would include the previous ones - the sixth and seventh . In April 1931, the writer met with Gorky, who had returned to his homeland, and handed him the manuscript of the sixth part of The Quiet Flows the Don. In a letter to Fadeev, Gorky spoke in favor of publishing the book, although, in his opinion, "it will give the emigrant Cossacks a few pleasant minutes." At the request of Sholokhov, Gorky, after reading the manuscript, gave it to Stalin. In July 1931, Sholokhov met with Stalin at Gorky's dacha. Despite the fact that Stalin was clearly not satisfied with many pages of the novel (for example, the unnecessarily “soft” description of General Kornilov), at the end of the conversation he firmly said: “We will publish the third book of The Quiet Flows the Don!”

The editors of Oktyabr promised to resume publication of the novel from the November issue of the magazine, but some members of the editorial board strongly protested against the publication, and a sixth part of the novel went to the cult prop of the Central Committee. New chapters began to appear only in November 1932, but the editors made such significant cuts in them that Sholokhov himself demanded that printing be suspended. In the double issue of the journal, the editors were forced to publish the fragments removed from the already published chapters, accompanying their publication with a very unconvincing explanation: “For technical reasons (the set is scattered) from Nos. 1 and 2 in the novel “Quiet Don” by M. Sholokhov ... pieces fell out ... » The publication of the third book resumed from the seventh issue and ended in the tenth. The first separate edition of the third book of The Quiet Flows the Don was published at the end of February 1933 by the State Publishing House of Fiction. Preparing the book for publication, Sholokhov restored all the fragments rejected by the Oktyabr magazine.

In 1931, film directors I. Pravov and O. Preobrazhensky made a feature film based on the novel The Quiet Flows the Don with a magnificent duet of actors: A. Abrikosov (Grigory) and E. Tsesarskaya (Aksinya). However, the film did not immediately reach the viewer, accused, like the novel, of "admiring the Cossack life", of depicting "Cossack adultery".

From January to September 1932, in parallel with the release of The Quiet Flows the Don, the first Virgin Soil Upturned was published in the journal Novy Mir. And again, the author met with serious resistance from the editors, who demanded that the chapters on dispossession be removed. And Sholokhov once again resorted to the help of Stalin, who, after reading the manuscript, instructed: "The novel must be printed."

In 1932, Sholokhov joined the CPSU (b). the work begun on the second book of Virgin Soil Upturned had to be temporarily postponed in order to complete the fourth book of The Quiet Flows the Don. However, life again violated the writer's creative plans - the terrible "Holodomor" of 1933 came. Sholokhov tried to do everything to help his countrymen survive. Understanding. That the local leadership cannot cope with the impending catastrophe of famine, Sholokhov turns to Stalin with a letter in which he paints a horrifying picture on fifteen pages: “T. Stalin! The Veshensky district, along with many other districts of the North Caucasus region, did not fulfill the grain procurement plan and did not fill up the seeds. In this region, as in other regions, collective farmers and individual farmers are now dying of starvation; adults and children swell up and eat everything that a person is not supposed to eat, starting with carrion and ending with oak bark and all kinds of swamp roots. The writer gives examples of the criminal actions of the authorities, squeezing “surplus” of bread from hungry peasants: “In the Grachevsky collective farm, during interrogation, an authorized representative of the Republic of Kazakhstan hung collective farmers by the neck from the ceiling, continued to interrogate them half-strangled, then led them to the river on a belt, beat them with their feet on the way, put on the ice on his knees and continued the interrogation. There are many such examples in the letter. Sholokhov also cites figures: “Out of 50,000 of the population, no less than 49,000 are starving. For these 49,00, 22,000 pounds have been received. It's for three months."

Stalin, whose directives were so zealously carried out by local grain producers, nevertheless did not fail to respond to the letter of the 28-year-old writer: “I received your letter on the fifteenth. Thank you for your message. We will do whatever is required. Name a number. Stalin. 16.IV. 33. Encouraged by the fact that his letter was not left without attention, Sholokhov writes to Stalin again and not only reports the figure by which he estimated the need for bread in the Veshensky and Verkhne-Donsky regions, but also continues to open the leader’s eyes to the arbitrariness perpetrated on collective farms and to its perpetrators. , whom I saw not only among the grassroots leadership. Stalin replies with a telegram in which he informs that in addition to the recently released forty thousand poods of rye, the Veshenians will receive an additional eighty thousand poods, forty thousand are being released to the Verkhne-Don region. However, in a letter written later to Sholokhov, the “leader” reproached the writer for a one-sided understanding of events, for seeing only victims in the grain growers and ignoring the facts of sabotage on their part.

Only after the hardest year of 1933 did Sholokhov finally have the opportunity to finish the fourth book of The Quiet Flows the Don. The seventh part of the novel was published in Novy Mir in late 1937 - early 1938, the eighth and final part appeared in the second and third issues of Novy Mir in 1940. The following year, the novel was first published in its entirety as a separate edition. By this time, the author had already been elected a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (1937) and a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1939).

The position taken by Sholokhov in the 1930s testifies to the civil courage of the writer. In 1937, he came to the defense of the leaders of the Veshensky district held in Lubyanka, turned to Stalin, and achieved a meeting with the arrested secretary of the district committee, Pyotr Lugovoi. Sholokhov's efforts were not in vain: the leaders of the district were released and reinstated in their positions. In 1938, he stood up for the arrested I. T. Kleimenov, son-in-law of Levitskaya, a former employee of the Soviet trade mission in Berlin, a rocket technology specialist, one of the creators of the legendary Katyusha. The writer personally met with Beria, but by the time they met, Kleimenov had already been shot. In 1955, M. Sholokhov sent a letter to the Party Control Commission under the Central Committee of the CPSU, in which he pointed out the need for the rehabilitation of Kleimenov. Through the efforts of Sholokhov, Kleimenov's wife, Levitskaya's daughter, Margarita Konstantinovna, was released from prison. Sholokhov also stood up for the son of the writer A. Platonov and the son of Anna Akhmatova, Lev Gumilyov, who were in the camp, contributed to the publication of the collection of Akhmatova herself (it came out in 1940 after the poetess had been forced to remain silent for eighteen years) and offered to nominate him for the Stalin Prize established at that time. And all this despite the fact that clouds were constantly gathering over him. Back in 1931, at Gorky’s apartment, G. Yagoda, who was all-powerful at that time, told the writer: “Misha, you are still a contortionist! Your "Quiet Don" is closer to whites than to us! According to anonymous letters received by the secretary of the district committee P. Lugovoi by Sholokhov himself, in 1938 local Chekists tried to threaten the people they had arrested to testify against Sholokhov. The leaders of the Rostov NKVD instructed the secretary of the party organization of the Novocherkassk Industrial Institute, Ivan Pogorelov, to expose Sholokhov as an enemy preparing an uprising of the Don, Kuban and Terek Cossacks against Soviet power. An honest man, in the past a fearless intelligence officer, Pogorelov decided to save Sholokhov and informed him and Lugovoi about the assignment given to him. On the advice of Pogorelov, Sholokhov went to Moscow to see Stalin. Arrived there secretly and Pogorelov himself. In Stalin's office, in the presence of his patrons from the Rostov NKVD, he exposed them, presenting as material evidence a note with the address of a safe house, written by the hand of one of the Rostov Chekists. In such a difficult situation, balancing between freedom and the threat of physical destruction, Sholokhov had to work on the last book of The Quiet Flows the Don.

After the release of the final chapters of the Cossack epic, the author was nominated for the Stalin Prize. In November 1940, a discussion of the novel took place in the Stalin Prize Committee. “All of us,” Alexander Fadeev said then, “are offended by the end of the work in the best Soviet feelings. Because for 14 years they were waiting for the end: and Sholokhov brought his beloved hero to moral devastation. Film director Alexander Dovzhenko echoed him: "I I read the book “Quiet Don” with a feeling of deep inner dissatisfaction ... The impressions are summarized as follows: the quiet Don lived for centuries, Cossacks and Cossacks lived, rode, drank, sang ... there was some kind of juicy, odorous, settled, warm life . The revolution came, the Soviet government, the Bolsheviks - they ruined the quiet Don, dispersed, set brother against brother, son against father, husband against wife, brought the country to impoverishment ... infected with gonorrhea, syphilis, sowed dirt, anger, drove strong, temperamental people into bandits... and that was the end of it. This is a huge mistake in the author's intention. “The book The Quiet Flows the Flows River caused both delight and disappointment among readers,” said Alexei Tolstoy. - The end of the "Quiet Flows the Don" - a plan or a mistake? I think it's a mistake... Gregory shouldn't leave literature like a bandit. This is not true for the people and for the revolution.” 1 . Despite the negative reviews of authoritative cultural figures, in March 1941 Sholokhov was awarded the Stalin Prize of the 1st degree for the novel Quiet Flows the Don. On the second day of the Great Patriotic War, the writer transferred his prize to the Defense Fund.

In July 1941, Sholokhov, the regimental commissar of the reserve, was drafted into the army, sent to the front, worked in the Soviet Information Bureau, was a special correspondent for Pravda and Krasnaya Zvezda, participated in the battles near Smolensk on the Western Front, near Rostov on the Southern Front. In January 1942, he received a serious shell shock during an unsuccessful landing of an aircraft at an airfield in Kuibyshev, which made itself felt throughout his life.

In the spring of 1942, Sholokhov’s story “The Science of Hatred” appeared, in which the writer created the image of a hero who had been captured, despite the fact that on August 16, 1941, the order of the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander No. 270 was issued, which equated the prisoners with traitors.

On July 6, Sholokhov arrived in Veshenskaya, and two days later, German aircraft raided the village. One of the air bombs hit the courtyard of the Sholokhov house, and his mother died in front of the writer. In the fall of 1941, Sholokhov handed over his home archive to the district department of the NKVD for storage, so that if necessary it could be taken out along with the documents of the department, however, when in 1942 the German troops rapidly reached the Don, local organizations were hastily evacuated, and the writer's archive, including the manuscript of The Quiet Flows the Don and the yet unpublished second book of Virgin Soil Upturned, was lost. Only one folder of manuscripts of the Cossack epic was saved and returned to the writer by the commander of the tank brigade that defended Veshenskaya.

The writer's activity during the terrible war years was appreciated by the Soviet government: in September 1945, the writer was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree.

Already during the war, when literature was dominated by small prose, promptly responding to the rapidly changing situation in the country, Sholokhov began work on a novel in which he intended to give a broad coverage of military events. In 1943-1944, the first chapters of this novel, called "They Fought for the Motherland", were published in Pravda and Krasnaya Zvezda. After the war, in 1949, Sholokhov published his continuation.

In the same year, the 12th volume of the collected works of Stalin was published, in which the already mentioned letter to F. Cohn was first published, which spoke of the gross mistakes made by the author of The Quiet Flows the Flows. The publication of this document could at that time be regarded by the editors as a ban on republishing the novel. Sholokhov wrote to Stalin asking him to explain what these mistakes were. There was no response to the letter. After a long wait, Sholokhov asked Stalin for a personal meeting. This meeting was postponed several times, and when finally a car was sent for Sholokhov to take him to the Kremlin, the writer ordered the driver to call at the Grand Hotel, where he ordered dinner. When reminded that Stalin was waiting for him, Sholokhov replied that he had waited longer and did not go to the meeting. Since then, relations with Stalin were interrupted, and Sholokhov did not appear in Moscow until the death of the leader.

And although The Quiet Flows the Don continued to be published, it was apparently Stalin’s mention of Sholokhov’s “gross mistakes” that allowed the editor of Goslitizdat, K. Potapov, to subject the novel to unprecedented censorship. In the 1953 edition, entire fragments disappeared from the novel, concerning, for example, the ideological judgments of Bunchuk and Listnitsky, the images of General Kornilov, Shtokman, the relationship between Bunchuk and Anna Pogudko, the characteristics of the Volunteer Army being created in Rostov, etc. In addition to cuts, the editor allowed himself to distort the author's language, replacing the colorful Sholokhov dialectisms with neutral commonly used words, and even made his own additions to the text of the novel, among which were references to Stalin1.

In the summer of 1950, Sholokhov completed the first book of the novel "They Fought for the Motherland" and set to work on the second. According to the writer's intention, the novel was to consist of three books. The first was supposed to be devoted to pre-war life, the second and third - to the events of the war. “I started the novel from the middle. Now he already has a body. Now I am grafting the head and legs to the body,”2 the author wrote in 1965. To create a large-scale work about the war, personal front-line impressions and memories of loved ones were certainly not enough, so Sholokhov turned to the General Staff with a request to allow him to work in the archives. Half-rank in July 1950, the refusal of his request, he turned to G. M. Malenkov for help, but he had to wait eight months for a response from Him. This unwillingness of the authorities to help the artist was one of the reasons why work on the novel was delayed. Only in 1954 new chapters of the novel about the war were completed and appeared in print.

In 1954, the oldest Russian writer S. Sergeev-Tsensky received an offer from the Nobel Committee to nominate a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. In agreement with the leadership of the Writers' Union and the secretariat of the Central Committee of the party, Sergeev-Tsensky proposed Sholokhov's candidacy. However, due to the length of the approvals, this proposal came late, and the committee was forced to refuse to consider Sholokhov's candidacy.

On New Year's days - December 31, 1956 and January 1, 1957 - the story "The Fate of a Man" was published in Pravda, in which the main character was a Soviet soldier who was captured. And although Sholokhov did not dare to say what awaited the prisoners of war in their homeland during the days of the war, the very choice of a hero became an act of civic courage.

Since 1951, Sholokhov has been recreating the second book of Virgin Soil Upturned almost anew. On December 26, 1959, he called E. Popovkin, editor-in-chief of the Moscow magazine, and said: “Well, put an end to it ... Thirty years of work! I feel very lonely. Orphaned somehow." The second book of Virgin Soil Upturned was published in 1960. For this novel, Sholokhov was awarded the Lenin Prize.

1 Word about Sholokhov. S. 406.

In the late 50s and early 60s, Sholokhov's work attracted the close attention of filmmakers. In 1957-1958 director S. Gerasimov shot the film Quiet Flows the Don with a brilliant cast. In 1960-1961, A. G. Ivanov filmed Virgin Soil Upturned. The film The Fate of a Man (1959), which received the main prize of the Moscow International Film Festival, the Lenin Prize, and made a triumphal procession on the screens of many countries of the world, was a special audience success. This film was the directorial debut of S. Bondarchuk, who played the main role in it. Bondarchuk more than once turned to Sholokhov's prose. In 1975, he filmed the novel They Fought for the Motherland, and just before his death, he completed filming a new film version of The Quiet Flows the Don.

In 1965, Sholokhov received official international recognition: he was awarded the Nobel Prize for his novel The Quiet Flows the Don.

As for Sholokhov's civic position, in the post-war decades it became extremely controversial and increasingly moved away from the position of the author of The Quiet Flows the Don.

Sholokhov listened with interest and genuine attention to A. T. Tvardovsky's poem "Terkin in the Other World", rejected in 1954 by party censorship, and at the same time did not in any way recognize the political program of the Novy Mir magazine, which Tvardovsky led in that time. Sholokhov contributed to the publication of A. Solzhenitsyn's story "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", but until the end of his life he did not accept Solzhenitsyn's concept of history and his assessment of Soviet power. Sholokhov “broke through” the publication of a collection of Russian fairy tales, collected and processed by Andrei Platonov, who was in cruel disgrace, putting his name on the book as an editor, and in the same years, in fact, took part in the campaign against the “cosmopolitans”, supporting the article by M. Bubennova “Are Literary Pseudonyms Necessary Now?” (1951) with his article "With the visor lowered", which K. Simonov called "unparalleled in rudeness." In an interview with a French journalist, Sholokhov, unexpectedly for many, stated: “Pasternak’s book Doctor Zhivago should have been published in the Soviet Union, instead of banning it,” and at the same time, he spoke of the novel itself without respect.

In September 1965, the KGB arrested the writers Y. Daniel and A. Sinyavsky, accusing them of anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda, and distribution of anti-Soviet literature. The entire world community was concerned about this fact. The Union of Writers, the Soviet government, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the editorial offices of newspapers received numerous letters in defense of illegally persecuted writers. Many cultural figures turned to Sholokhov, who had just been awarded the Nobel Prize and who, in the opinion of the world community, had high authority both among readers and the Soviet authorities. One of the first to address Sholokhov in November 1965 was also the Nobel laureate François Mauriac: “If there is a partnership for the Nobel Prize, I beg my famous colleague Sholokhov to convey our request to those on whom the release of Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel depends” 1 . This was followed by telegrams from cultural figures of Italy (15 signatures), Mexico (35 signatures), Chile (7 signatures). The campaign of appeals reached its peak at the time of the award ceremony, which took place on December 10, 1965 in Stockholm. But neither in the press nor at the ceremony did Sholokhov respond in any way to the appeals received.

In February 1966, a trial was held that sentenced Sinyavsky to seven, and Daniel to five years in a strict regime colony. On the eve of the 23rd Party Congress, sixty-two writers addressed the presidium of the congress, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR with a letter in which, standing up for their fellow writers who had already been convicted, they offered to take them on bail. Sholokhov's surname is not among the signatories of the letter. But at the congress itself, Sholokhov made a speech in which, in particular, he said: “I am ashamed of those who slandered the Motherland and poured dirt on everything that is brightest for us. They are immoral. I am ashamed of those who tried and are trying to take them under protection, no matter how this protection is motivated. It is doubly ashamed of those who offer their services and ask for the condemned renegades to be bailed out to them.<...>If these thugs with a black conscience had been caught in the memorable twenties, when they judged not relying on the strictly delimited articles of the Criminal Code, but guided by revolutionary legal consciousness, oh, these werewolves would have received the wrong measure of punishment! And here, you see, they are still discussing the “severity” of the sentence” 2 .

The writer's speech caused shock among the Soviet intelligentsia. Lidia Korneevna Chukovskaya turned to him with an angry open letter. “The business of writers,” she wrote, “is not to persecute, but to intervene... This is what great Russian literature teaches us in the person of its best representatives. This is the tradition you violated by loudly regretting that the verdict of the court was not severe enough! A writer, like any Soviet citizen, can and should be tried in a criminal court for any offense - just not for his books. Literature is beyond the jurisdiction of the criminal court. Ideas should be opposed to ideas, not prisons and camps. This is what you should have declared to your listeners, if you, in fact, had risen to the podium as a representative of Soviet literature. But you were speaking as an apostate of it... And literature itself will take revenge on you and itself... It will sentence you to the highest punishment that exists for an artist - to creative barrenness" 3 (May 25, 1966).

In 1969, Sholokhov handed over chapters from the novel They Fought for the Motherland to Pravda. The editor-in-chief of the newspaper, M. Zimyanin, did not dare to publish them on his own, since they contained criticism of Stalin. And the manuscript was handed over to Brezhnev. After waiting for a decision for more than three weeks, Sholokhov himself sent a letter to the General Secretary, in which he asked to consider the issue of printing new chapters. However, the writer did not wait for either an answer or a personal meeting with Brezhnev. And suddenly Pravda published chapters, without the knowledge of the author, erasing from them everything that concerned the Stalinist terror. Probably, after this, Sholokhov realized that he would not be able to tell the truth about the war that he knew. According to the writer's daughter, Sholokhov burned the manuscripts of the unpublished chapters of the novel. The writer did not turn to fiction anymore, although fate measured out another fifteen years of his life. However, it is unlikely that only the insult inflicted by Pravda is the reason for this. Sholokhov himself was aware of the creative crisis that struck him in recent decades. Back in 1954, speaking at the Second Congress of Soviet Writers, he said: “The term “leader” as applied to a person who really leads someone is a good term in itself, but in life it happens that there was a leading writer, and now he is no longer leading, but standing. Yes, and it costs not a month, not a year, but that way ten years, or even more, - say, like your humble servant and others like him. M. A. Sholokhov died on February 24, 1984. Even during the life of Sholokhov, in the 70s, a new wave of accusations of the writer of plagiarism arose. Only now it has acquired not the form of rumors, but the form of scientific discussion.

In 1974, the Parisian publishing house YMCA-press published an unfinished study due to the death of the author, The Stirrup of the Quiet Don (Riddles of the Novel), signed with the pseudonym D * (only in 1990). For the first time, the publication of the restored text of the novel was carried out on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Victory, it became known that the author of this work was the famous literary critic I. N. Medvedeva-Tomashevskaya). The book was published with a preface by A. I. Solzhenitsyn, which included the following words: “An unprecedented event in world literature has come before the reading public. The 23-year-old debutant created a work on material that far exceeds his life experience and his level of education (4-grade).<...>The author with liveliness and knowledge described the world war, which he had not been to at the age of ten, and the Civil War, which ended when he was 14 years old. The book succeeded with such artistic power, which is achievable only after many attempts by an experienced master - but the best 1st volume, begun in 1926, was submitted ready to the editor in 1927; a year later, after the 1st, the magnificent 2nd was also ready; and even less than a year after the 2nd, the 3rd was filed, and only the proletarian censorship stopped this stunning move. Then - an incomparable genius? But the subsequent A 5-year life was never confirmed and repeated neither this height nor this pace.

Based on the analysis of the text, the author of "Stirrup" comes to the conclusion that there are "two completely different, but coexisting authorial principles" in the novel. The true author, according to the researcher, is characterized by the manifestation of “high humanism and love of the people, which are characteristic of the Russian intelligentsia and Russian literature of the 1M1J-1910s”2. He has a language that organically connects the Don folk dialect with the intellectual speech of the writer. The work of the "co-author" consisted primarily in editing the author's text in accordance with ideological guidelines that completely contradicted the author's. The language of the “co-author” is distinguished by “poverty and even helplessness”. D* names in his work the name of the "true author" of the novel. She, in her opinion, is the Cossack writer Fyodor Dmitrievich Kryukov (1870-1920), whose manuscript was handed over to S. Goloushev and is mentioned in L. Andreev's letter. A. Solzhenitsyn, the publisher of The Stirrup of the Quiet Flows the Don, agrees with this version. Hypothesis D* was also supported by R. A. Medvedev, who in 1975 published abroad in French the book Who Wrote Quiet Flows the Don? Since these works were not published in the Soviet Union, although they were well known in certain circles, there was no serious refutation of the arguments put forward in the Soviet press, and attempts to protect Sholokhov's authorship without entering into an open discussion, and even more so to hush up the problem, not only did not lead to the justification of the writer, but, on the contrary, often gave rise to doubts even in those readers who were not inclined to deny the authorship of Sholokhov. The problem was treated differently abroad. The American Slavist G. Ermolaev conducted a detailed comparative analysis of the text of The Quiet Flows the Don with the texts of Sholokhov and Kryukov and came to the conclusion that Sholokhov can be considered the author of the novel with good reason. A group of Norwegian scientists led by G. Hjetso used computer technology and methods of mathematical linguistics to solve the problem. With the help of quantitative analysis, the researchers tested the hypothesis of Kryukov's authorship and came to conclusions that refute it. On the contrary, their analysis confirmed that "Sholokhov writes strikingly similar to the author of The Quiet Flows the Don."

A new round of discussion began after the death of Sholokhov in the 80-90s. Among the most significant works of this period, one should mention the study published in Israel by Z. Bar-Sella "Quiet Don" against Sholokhov (1988-1994). The author, having carried out a thorough study of the text of the novel, its style, found numerous errors and inaccuracies, and also named a number of little-known contenders for the authorship of The Quiet Flows the Don and announced his discovery of a new author's name. In the published parts of the study, his name has not yet been named, but Bar-Sella gives some information about him: “a Don Cossack by origin, studied at the Moscow Imperial University, author of two (except for The Quiet Don) books, shot by the Reds in January 1920 in the city of Rostov-on-Don. At the time of his death, he was not yet thirty years old. In 1993, the journal Novy Mir published an extensive work by A. G. and S. E. Makarov2. Without setting themselves the goal of naming a specific author of the novel, the researchers, using a rigorous analysis, reveal the existence of two different author's editions of the original text of The Quiet Flows the Don and their mechanical, compiling unification by the "co-author" of the text in the absence of a visible understanding by him (the "co-author") of the emerging fundamental differences and internal contradictions.

The most important argument against Sholokhov as the author of The Quiet Flows the Don in recent years has been the lack of archives, drafts and manuscripts of the novel. However, as it turned out, drafts of the first book of the novel survived. They were tracked down by the journalist Lev Komm, which he reported in his publications in the early 1990s. In 1995, his book “Who Wrote The Quiet Flows the Don”: A Chronicle of a Search was published in Moscow, in which the manuscripts were published and commented, and the author’s corrections of parts of the novel were reproduced. The appearance in print of manuscripts dated and edited by the writer himself became a serious argument in favor of Sholokhov's authorship. However, not being sure that "uninvited guests - collectors, literary critics, robbers, etc." will not come to the keepers of the archive, Kolodny did not indicate in whose hands these manuscripts are.

At the end of 1999, on the eve of Sholokhov's anniversary (2000 - the year of the 95th anniversary of his birth), there were reports in the media that the manuscripts of The Quiet Don, which, as it turned out, had been kept all these years in the family of Vasily Kudashev, a close friend of the writer who died during the Great Patriotic War, were discovered by the staff of the Institute of World Literature. Gorky, who conducted the search independently of L. Kolodny. In an interview with a correspondent of the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, the director of the institute, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, F.F. Kuznetsov, said the following: “The most important thing for us was to determine how serious what the curators of manuscripts possess. When we agreed on an acceptable price for both us and them, a photocopier was removed with their consent. Sensation! You won't find another word. 855 pages written by hand - most of them in Sholokhov's hand, the other - in the hand of Maria Petrovna, the writer's wife (then the Sholokhovs did not yet have a typewriter). Of these, more than five hundred pages - drafts, variants, phrases, crossed out up and down in search of the desired word - in short, living evidence of the author's thought, creative searches.

It is difficult to say whether the introduction of these manuscripts into scientific circulation will put an end to the protracted dispute. But one thing is already clear today: great books have the ability to live their own lives, independent of their creators and critics. Time has confirmed that this is the fate destined for the best works of Mikhail Sholokhov.

1punishment

2The price of a metaphor, or Crime andpunishment

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.

(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 Alexandrovich 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 Aleksandrovich 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."

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.

MAIN DATES IN THE LIFE AND CREATIVITY OF M. A. SHOLOHOV

1905, May 24- on the farm Kruzhilin of the village of the Vyoshenskaya region of the Don Cossacks (now Vyoshenskaya, Rostov region), Alexander Mikhailovich Sholokhov and Anastasia Danilovna Kuznetsova (surname after her first husband; nee Chernikova) had a son, Mikhail. Father - from merchants, originally from the Ryazan region, from the city of Zaraysk; mother - originally from Chernihiv region, served as a maid in a manor house. Parents were in a civil marriage.

1910 - Alexander Mikhailovich with Anastasia Danilovna and son Misha move to the Karginsky farm.

1912 - Misha was admitted to the Karginsky parochial school for men in his second year of study.

1913 - A. M. Sholokhov and A. D. Kuznetsova got married (after the death of her official husband, an Ataman Cossack). Misha is "adopted" by his own father and recorded as "son of a tradesman".

1914 - due to an eye disease, A. M. Sholokhov takes his son to Moscow to the eye clinic of Dr. Snegirev. In the capital, Mikhail is assigned to a private gymnasium named after G. Shelaputin.

1915 - the father transfers his son to the Bogucharsky men's gymnasium in the Voronezh province.

1918, June - German troops approached Boguchar, the father takes his son from the gymnasium.

Autumn - sends his son to Vyoshenskaya gymnasium.

1919, March - June - in Vyoshenskaya, a counter-revolutionary Cossack uprising breaks out. The Sholokhov family again moves to the village of Karginskaya, where Soviet power is established in January.

1920 - the future writer works as a teacher for the eradication of illiteracy among the adult population, a clerk in the Karga stanitsa executive committee. He plays in the performances of the Karginsky Folk Theater, writes plays for him.

1921 - Mikhail was enrolled as an assistant accountant at the Karginsky Procurement Office.

1922 February - By order of the Donoblprodkom, Mikhail Sholokhov was sent to Rostov for training courses.

May - after completing the course, he was sent to food work in the village of Bukanovskaya.

October - Mikhail leaves for Moscow to continue his education. It is not possible to enter the workers' faculty - he was not a member of the Komsomol and did not have a Komsomol ticket. He works in the capital as a loader, paves roads with an artel of masons, serves as an accountant, tries his hand at literary work.

1923 - began to visit the literary association at the magazine "Young Guard" in the literary association of the magazine "Young Guard".

September - first publication in the newspaper "Youthful Truth": feuilleton "Test".

1924 January - returns to the Don, to the village of Bukanovskaya, marries Maria Petrovna Gromoslavskaya, daughter of the former stanitsa ataman, Bukanovskaya teacher. Young people get married in a church. They leave for Moscow, where they live for some time.

December - Sholokhov's short story "The Mole" was published in the newspaper "Young Leninist".

1925 - the writer's father died. Acquaintance with A. Serafimovich, which turned into a creative community. Sholokhov's stories "Bakhchevnik", "Shepherd", "Nakhalenok" and others are published in Komsomol periodicals.

1926 - Sholokhov's first collection "Don Stories" is published, then - "Azure Steppe" with a parting word from Serafimovich. The Sholokhov family settles forever in the village of Vyoshenskaya. The writer begins to create the novel "Quiet Flows the Don".

1928 January- The magazine "October" with the support of Serafimovich begins to publish the first book of "The Quiet Flows the Don" (No. 1–4); in the same year the second book of the novel (Nos. 5-10) was published there.

1929 - the beginning of the publication of the third book of The Quiet Flows the Don. Rumors of plagiarism are spreading. Sholokhov presents drafts of the novel for review by a special commission.

April - the newspapers Rabochaya Tribuna (April 24) and Pravda (April 29) publish a commission statement that the rumors are lies and slander against Sholokhov. The publication of the third book of the novel was suspended - the leaders of the RAPP accused the writer of justifying the Upper Don uprising; the writer did not agree to the proposed reductions and corrections.

1930 - Sholokhov receives an invitation from Gorky to visit him in Sorrento. Leaves together with Artem Vesely and V. Kudashov. Without waiting for a visa in Berlin, he returns to Vyoshenskaya.

1931 January- Sholokhov sends a letter to Stalin about the atrocities on the Don in the course of collectivization.

June - Sholokhov's meeting with Stalin through the mediation of Gorky, at which the fate of the further publication of the third book of The Quiet Flows the Don was positively decided.

Prohibition of the first film "Quiet Flows the Don" for ideological reasons.

1932 January - The publication of the third book of The Quiet Flows the Don is nearing completion. The journal "New World" begins to publish the first book of the novel "Virgin Soil Upturned".

Sholokhov joins the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, takes part in the fight against gross violations in collective farm construction on the Don, writes a letter to Stalin, demanding to investigate the cases of those who "mocked the collective farmers and the Soviet government", and those who directed these actions .

1933 - famine in the Don. In an effort to save fellow countrymen from death, Sholokhov sends letters to Stalin asking for help.

1934, September - as a delegate participates in the first congress of the Union of Soviet Writers, was elected a member of the board.

Trip to Sweden, Denmark, England and France.

1936 March - at the Bolshoi Theater the premiere of I. Dzerzhinsky's opera The Quiet Flows the Don (libretto edited by M. Bulgakov). Stalin's criticism of formalism in the production.

November - Novy Mir is starting to publish the seventh part of the fourth book of The Quiet Flows the Don (to be completed next March).

Sholokhov is included in the bureau of the International Association of Writers in Defense of Culture. Elected Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.

1939 March - At the 18th Party Congress, Sholokhov, in a speech, expressed disagreement with the authorities' directives to justify repressions.

December- Sholokhov was elected a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

February March- the last chapters of the novel are published in the "New World".

1941 - Sholokhov is awarded the Stalin Prize for The Quiet Flows the Don, despite the disagreement of many members of the Prize Committee.

June- on the second day of the Great Patriotic War, the writer transfers the prize to the National Defense Fund.

July - regimental commissar of the reserve M. A. Sholokhov becomes a war correspondent for the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper.

Collaborated with Pravda and the Soviet Information Bureau.

1942 - Sholokhov receives a shell shock in a plane crash; months of treatment.

June - publishes the story "The Science of Hate".

July - during the bombing of Vyoshenskaya, the writer's mother died; the archive is almost completely lost (part of the manuscripts of two novels and letters).

1943 May - Sholokhov begins to publish in Pravda chapters from the novel They Fought for the Motherland.

1945 - Sholokhov ends the war in East Prussia. In May, two of his articles are published: "Appeal to the Soviet youth" and "Victory, which history did not know."

1946 - refuses Stalin's proposal to head the Writers' Union. Elected Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. In Sweden, an article is published with a proposal to nominate Sholokhov for the Nobel Prize.

1949 - published a letter from Stalin in 1929 criticizing some of the provisions in the description of the Civil War in the "Quiet Don", which led to a number of violent alterations of the novel during reprinting, with which the author could not agree.

1954 December - as a delegate to the Second All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers, Sholokhov delivers a keynote speech on improving the activities of the Writers' Union.

February - speech at the 20th Party Congress criticizing obsolete traditions in the activities of the Writers' Union.

Collected works of Sholokhov began to be published in the Young Guard and Goslitizdat. The story "The Fate of Man" is published.

1957 - the film "Quiet Flows the Don" directed by S. Gerasimov is released.

1958, September - Sholokhov begins to publish in Pravda chapters from the second book of the novel Virgin Soil Upturned.

1959, September - a trip to the USA as part of a delegation that accompanied N. S. Khrushchev; refusal to write anything for the collection following the trip. The film "The Fate of a Man" directed by S. Bondarchuk is released.

1960 - at the beginning of the year, the second book of Virgin Soil Upturned was published as a separate edition. Sholokhov was awarded the Lenin Prize for his novel.

1961 October - Sholokhov's speech at the XXII Party Congress with sharp critical remarks. Elected a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU.

1962–1963 - Sholokhov supported the publication of A. Solzhenitsyn's camp story "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" and A. Tvardovsky's poem "Terkin in the Other World."

1965 December- awarding the Nobel Prize to Sholokhov for the novel "Quiet Flows the Don"; presented in Stockholm on 11 December.

1967 July - receives a large group of young writers in Vyoshenskaya together with the first cosmonaut Yu. Gagarin.

The writer was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor.

1968 October - sent a letter to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU L. I. Brezhnev with a request not to delay the publication of new chapters of the novel “They Fought for the Motherland” for censorship reasons.

1974 summer - meeting with the film crew of the film "They fought for their homeland": director S. Bondarchuk, leading actors V. Shukshin, Yu. Nikulin, V. Tikhonov, etc.

A. Solzhenitsyn is launching a campaign abroad to accuse Sholokhov of plagiarism.

1975 May - gala evening at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow in honor of the 70th anniversary of M. A. Sholokhov; the hero of the day is absent - a stroke.

1978 March - a letter to L. I. Brezhnev criticizing the state of affairs in culture; The commission of the Central Committee of the party sharply condemned this appeal.

1980 - awarding Sholokhov the second title of Hero of Socialist Labor.

1981–1982 - the writer is active in public activities, does not leave the dream of creating a military trilogy. Deterioration of health.

1983 July - despite a serious illness, he completes journalistic articles and literary notes: “To the Readers of the Rodnye Niva Library” and “Appeal to Bulgarian Readers”.

September - last lifetime publication: an appeal to the writers of the world "Let's protect life before it's too late!", Published in the journal "Foreign Literature".

1984 January- the writer is in a Moscow hospital with a diagnosis of cancer. Here he gives the go-ahead for the publication of the collected works in the publishing house "Fiction".

February - returns home to Vyoshenskaya. Sends a telegram to the publishing house on the appointment of the compiler of the publication of the youngest daughter M. M. Sholokhova-Manokhina with the authority to restore some political notes in the Quiet Don.

February 23 - Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov was buried in the garden near his house, on the high bank of the Don, glorified by him.

MAIN DATES OF THE LIFE AND WORK OF G. R. DERZHAVIN 1743, July 3 - in the family of poor Kazan landowners Lieutenant Colonel Roman Nikolaevich Derzhavin and his wife Fekla Andreevna, the son of Gabriel was born - the future poet. 1750 - "Yavlen" in Orenburg, along with other noble sons

MAIN DATES OF LIFE AND WORK OF AA MEZRINA 1853 - was born in the settlement of Dymkovo in the family of blacksmith AL Nikulin. 1896 - participation in the All-Russian exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod. 1900 - participation in the World Exhibition in Paris. 1908 - acquaintance with A. I. Denshin. 1917 - exit

The main dates of life and work 1938, January 25 - was born at 9:40 in the maternity hospital on Third Meshchanskaya Street, 61/2. Mother, Nina Maksimovna Vysotskaya (before the marriage of Seregina), is a referent-translator. Father, Semyon Vladimirovich Vysotsky, - military signalman. 1941 - together with his mother

MAIN DATES OF LIFE AND CREATIVITY 1870, November 10 (October 23 old style) - was born in the city of Voronezh, in the family of a small estate nobleman Alexei Nikolaevich Bunin and Lyudmila Alexandrovna, nee Princess Chubarova. Childhood - in one of the family estates, on the farm of Butyrka, Yeletsky

The main dates of the life and work of I.S. Turgenev 1818, October 28 (November 9, new style) - Birth of I. S. Turgenev, "in Orel, in his house at 12 o'clock in the morning."

The main dates of the life and work of D. V. Davydov 1784, July 16 - In the noble family of Vasily Denisovich Davydov and his wife Elena Evdokimovna, nee Shcherbinina, the son Denis was born. 1793, summer - Meeting of 9-year-old Denis with A. V. Suvorov. 1798 -1802- Life in Moscow. First MAIN DATES OF LIFE AND CREATIVITY 1884 July 12: Amedeo Clemente Modigliani is born into a Jewish family of educated Livorne bourgeois, where he becomes the youngest of the four children of Flaminio Modigliani and Eugenia Garcin. He gets the nickname Dedo. Other children: Giuseppe Emanuele, MAIN DATES OF LIFE AND CREATIVITY 1930, September 15 - in Georgia, in the city of Gori, Merab Konstantinovich Mamardashvili was born. - political academy. 1938 - MAIN DATES OF LIFE AND CREATIVITY 1856, August 27 - Ivan Yakovlevich Franko was born in the village of Naguevichi, Drogobych district, in the family of a rural blacksmith. 1865, in the spring - Died

Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov (May 11 (May 24), 1905, Donskoy region - February 21, 1984) - Russian Soviet writer, Nobel Prize winner in literature (1965 - for the novel Quiet Don), a classic of Russian literature.

Born in the Kruzhilin village of the village of Veshenskaya Oblast of the Don Cossack Army. Mother, a Ukrainian peasant woman, served as a maid. She was forcibly married off to a Don Cossack-Ataman * Kuznetsov, but left him for a "out-of-town", wealthy clerk A. M. Sholokhov. Their illegitimate son initially bore the name of the mother's first husband, was considered a "Cossack son" with all the privileges and a land share. However, after the death of Kuznetsov (in 1912) and adoption by his own father, he began to be considered a "son of a tradesman", "nonresident" and lost all privileges.
Education was limited to four classes of the gymnasium - then there was the war. "Poets are born in different ways," he would later say. "For example, I was born out of the civil war on the Don." From the age of 15 he begins independent labor activity. He changed many professions: a teacher of an educational program school, an employee of the stanitsa revolutionary committee, an accountant, a journalist ... Since 1921 - "commissioner for bread", at the food appraisal. For "abuse of power at grain procurements" he was sentenced by a tribunal to death (replaced by a prison - conditionally) ...
In the autumn of 1922, M. Sholokhov arrived in Moscow, tried to enter the workers' faculty - they did not take him: he was not a member of the Komsomol. Lives on odd jobs. Attends the literary circle "Young Guard", tries to write, publishes feuilletons and essays in the capital's newspapers and magazines. These experiments prompted the creation of "Don stories" (1926), which immediately attracted attention.
In 1925, M. Sholokhov returned to his homeland and began to work on the main work of his life - the novel Quiet Flows the Don. The first two books of the novel were published in 1928. The publication was accompanied by stormy controversy: the novel about the civil war, written by a very young writer "anathematically talented" (according to M. Gorky's review), puzzled both with epic scope, skill, and the author's position. The publication of the third book of the novel was put on hold due to the apparently sympathetic depiction of the Upper Don Cossack uprising of 1919. In the resulting pause, M. Sholokhov takes on a novel about collectivization on the Don - Virgin Soil Upturned. There were no complaints about the content of this book. She left in 1932. And in the same year, the publication of "The Quiet Flows the Don" was resumed - after Stalin's intervention in the fate of the book. In 1940, the last parts of this unique epic of the 20th century were published.
For "Quiet Don" M. Sholokhov was awarded the Order of Lenin, in 1941 he was awarded the Stalin Prize of the 1st degree. However, the party activity of the first person of Soviet literature (especially in the post-war years) noticeably surpassed the writer's: neither during the war years (the military commander of Pravda and Krasnaya Zvezda), nor after that, almost nothing came out of his pen that resembled the author of Quiet Flows the Don (except, perhaps, the story "The Fate of a Man", 1957).
In 1960, M. Sholokhov was awarded the Lenin Prize for the second book of "Virgin Soil Upturned", and in 1965 - the Nobel Prize for "Quiet Don".
Twice Hero of Socialist Labor, holder of six orders of Lenin, honorary doctor of several European universities, Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov died and was buried in the village of Veshenskaya, on the steep bank of the Don.