Biography. Sholokhov's biography

W Olokhov Mikhail Alexandrovich - a great Russian writer, the largest Russian prose writer, a classic of Russian Soviet literature, an academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences, a reserve colonel.

Born on May 11 (24), 1905 on the farm Kruzhilin of the village of the Vyoshenskaya region of the Don Cossacks (now the Sholokhov district of the Rostov region). The illegitimate son of a Ukrainian woman, the wife of the Don Cossack A.D. Kuznetsova (1871-1942) and a wealthy clerk (the son of a merchant, a native of the Ryazan region) A.M. Sholokhov (1865-1925). In early childhood, he bore the surname Kuznetsov, received an allotment of land as a "son of a Cossack." In 1913, after being adopted by his own father, he lost his Cossack privileges, becoming the "son of a tradesman." He grew up in an atmosphere of obvious ambiguity, which, obviously, gave rise to a craving for truth and justice in Sholokhov's character, but at the same time the habit of hiding everything about himself as much as possible.

From 1915 to March 1918 he studied at the Bogucharsky men's classical gymnasium. He lived on 2nd Meshchanskaya Street (now Prokopenko Street) in the house of the priest D.I.Tishansky. He graduated from incomplete three classes of the gymnasium, the Civil War prevented (in official sources - he completed four classes). During the Civil War, the Sholokhov family could be under attack from two sides: for the White Cossacks, they were "non-residents", for the Reds - "exploiters". Young Sholokhov did not have a passion for hoarding (like his hero, the son of a wealthy Cossack Makar Nagulnov) and took the side of the victorious force that established at least relative peace, served in the food detachment, but arbitrarily reduced the taxation of people of his circle; was sentenced (probation for 1 year).

His elder friend and mentor, a member of the RSDLP (b) since 1903, E.G. Levitskaya (Sholokhov himself joined the party in 1932), to whom the story “The Fate of a Man” was subsequently dedicated, believed that in Grigory Melekhov’s “reelings” in "Quiet Don" is a lot of autobiographical. Sholokhov changed many professions, especially in Moscow, where he lived for a long time from the end of 1922 to 1926. Then, after gaining a foothold in literature, he settled in his homeland in the village of Veshenskaya.

In 1923, Sholokhov published feuilletons, from the end of 1923 - stories in which he immediately switched from feuilleton comedy to sharp drama, reaching tragedy. At the same time, the stories were not devoid of elements of melodrama. Most of these works were collected in the collections Don Stories (1925) and Azure Steppe (1926, supplemented by the previous collection). With the exception of the story “Alien Blood” (1926), where the old man Gavrila and his wife, who have lost their son, a white Cossack, nurse a communist food orderer and begin to love him like a son, and he leaves them, in Sholokhov’s early works, the heroes are mostly sharply They are divided into positive (Red fighters, Soviet activists) and negative, sometimes pure villains (whites, "bandits", kulaks and kulaks). Many characters have real prototypes, but Sholokhov sharpens almost everything, exaggerates: death, blood, torture, hunger pangs are deliberately naturalistic. The favorite plot of the young writer, starting with "The Mole" (1923), is a deadly clash between the closest relatives: father and son, siblings.

Sholokhov still unskillfully confirms his loyalty to the communist idea, emphasizing the priority of social choice in relation to any other human relationships, including family ones. In 1931, he republished Don Stories, adding new ones, which emphasized the comic in the behavior of the characters (later, in Virgin Soil Upturned, he combined comedy with drama, sometimes quite effectively). Then, for almost a quarter of a century, the stories were not reprinted, the author put them very low and returned them to the reader when, for lack of a new one, they had to remember the forgotten old.

In 1925, Sholokhov began a work about the Cossacks in 1917, during the Kornilov revolt, called Quiet Don (and not Donshchina, according to legend). However, this plan was abandoned, but a year later the writer again takes up the "Quiet Flows the Don", widely unfolding the picture of the pre-war life of the Cossacks and the events of the First World War. The first two books of the epic novel were published in 1928 in the October magazine. Almost immediately there are doubts about their authorship, too much knowledge and experience required a work of this magnitude. Sholokhov brought the manuscripts to Moscow for examination (in the 1990s, the Moscow journalist L.E. Kolodny gave their description, though not strictly scientific, and comments on them). The young writer was full of energy, had a phenomenal memory, read a lot (in the 1920s even the memoirs of white generals were available), asked the Cossacks in the Don farms about the "German" and civil wars, and he knew the life and customs of his native Don like no one else.

The events of collectivization (and those preceding it) delayed work on the epic novel. In letters, including to I.V. Stalin, Sholokhov tried to open his eyes to the true state of things: the complete collapse of the economy, lawlessness, torture applied to collective farmers. However, he accepted the very idea of ​​collectivization and, in a softened form, with undeniable sympathy for the main communist characters, showed on the example of the Gremyachiy Log farm in the first book of the novel Virgin Soil Upturned (1932). Even a very flattened depiction of dispossession (“right-wing deviator” Razmetny) was very suspicious for the authorities and semi-official writers, in particular, the Novy Mir magazine rejected the author’s title of the novel “With Blood and Sweat”. But in many ways, the work suited I.V. Stalin. The high artistic level of the book, as it were, proved the fruitfulness of communist ideas for art, and courage within the limits of what was permitted created the illusion of freedom of creativity in the USSR. "Virgin Soil Upturned" was declared a perfect example of the literature of socialist realism and soon entered into all school programs, becoming a mandatory work for study.

This directly or indirectly helped Sholokhov to continue work on The Quiet Don, the release of the third book (sixth part) of which was delayed due to a rather sympathetic portrayal of the participants in the anti-Bolshevik Upper Don uprising of 1919. Sholokhov turned to M. Gorky and with his help he obtained permission from I.V. Stalin to publish this book without cuts (1932), and in 1934 he basically completed the fourth, last, but began to rewrite it again, probably not without toughening ideological pressure. In the last two books of The Quiet Flows the Don (the seventh part of the fourth book was published in 1937-1938, the eighth in 1940), a lot of journalistic, often didactic, unambiguously pro-Bolshevik declarations appeared, quite often contradicting the plot and figurative structure of the epic novel . But this does not add arguments to the theory of “two authors” or “author” and “co-author”, developed by skeptics who irrevocably do not believe in the authorship of Sholokhov (among them A.I. Solzhenitsyn, I.B. Tomashevskaya). Apparently, Sholokhov himself was his "co-author", retaining mainly the artistic world that he created in the early 1930s, and fastening an ideological orientation in a purely external way.

In 1935, E.G. Levitskaya admired Sholokhov, finding that he had turned "from a 'doubter', staggering into a solid communist, who knew where he was going, clearly seeing both the goal and the means to achieve it." Undoubtedly, the writer convinced himself of this and, although in 1938 he almost fell victim to a false political accusation, he found the courage to end The Quiet Flows the Don with the complete collapse of his beloved hero Grigory Melekhov, crushed by the wheel of cruel history.

There are more than 600 characters in the epic novel, and most of them perish or die from grief, deprivation, absurdities and the disorder of life. The civil war, although at first it seems “toy” to “German” veterans, takes the lives of almost all the heroes who are remembered and loved by the reader, and the bright life, for which it was supposedly worth making such sacrifices, never comes.

Both fighting parties are to blame for what is happening, inciting bitterness in each other. Among the Reds, Sholokhov does not have such born executioners as Mitka Korshunov, the Bolshevik Bunchuk is engaged in executions out of a sense of duty and falls ill at such a “work”, but it was Bunchuk who first killed his comrade-in-arms, Yesaul Kalmykov, it was Bunchuk, the Reds were the first to chop up the prisoners, shot the arrested farmers, and Mikhail Koshevoy pursues his former friend Grigory, although he even forgave him for the murder of his brother Peter. Not only the agitation of Shtokman and other Bolsheviks is to blame, misfortunes cover people like an avalanche sweeping everything in its path as a result of their own bitterness, because of mutual misunderstanding, injustice and insults.

The epic content in The Quiet Flows the Don has not supplanted the novel, the personal. Sholokhov, like no one else, managed to show the complexity of a simple person (intellectuals do not arouse sympathy for him, in The Quiet Don they are mostly in the background and invariably speak bookish language even with Cossacks who do not understand them). The passionate love of Grigory and Aksinya, the true love of Natalya, the debauchery of Daria, the ridiculous mistakes of the aging Pantelei Prokofich, the mortal longing of the mother for her son who does not return from the war (Ilyinichna according to Grigory) and other tragic life interweaving make up the richest gamut of characters and situations. The life and nature of the Don are meticulously and, of course, lovingly depicted. The author conveys the sensations experienced by all human senses. The intellectual limitations of many heroes are compensated by the depth and sharpness of their experiences.

In 1939, Sholokhov was elected a full member (academician) of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

In The Quiet Flows the Don, the writer's talent spilled over into full force - and almost exhausted. Probably, this was facilitated not only by the social situation, but also by the writer's ever-increasing addiction to alcohol. The story "The Science of Hate" (1942), which agitated for hatred of the Nazis, turned out to be below the average of the "Don Stories" in terms of artistic quality. Somewhat higher was the level of the chapters published in 1943-1944 from the novel “They Fought for the Motherland”, conceived as a trilogy, but never finished (in the 1960s, Sholokhov attributed the “pre-war” chapters with talk about I.V. Stalin and repressions 1937, in the spirit of the already ended "thaw", they were printed with cuts, which completely deprived the writer of creative inspiration). The work consists mainly of soldiers' conversations and tales, oversaturated with jokes. In general, Sholokhov's failure in comparison not only with the first, but also with the second novel is obvious.

By a decree of the Council of People's Commissars of March 15, 1941, Sholokhov was awarded the Stalin (State) Prize of the 1st degree for the novel "Quiet Don".

After the war, Sholokhov, a publicist, paid a generous tribute to the official state ideology, but he noted the “thaw” with a work of rather high dignity - the story “The Fate of a Man” (1956). An ordinary person, a typical Sholokhov hero, appeared in a genuine moral greatness that he himself did not realize. Such a plot could not have appeared in the “first post-war spring”, which coincided with the meeting between the author and Andrei Sokolov: the hero was in captivity, he drank vodka without a snack so as not to humiliate himself in front of German officers - this, like the humanistic spirit of the story itself, was by no means not in line with the official literature nurtured by Stalinism. "The Fate of Man" turned out to be at the origins of a new concept of personality, more broadly - a new major stage in the development of literature.

The second book of "Virgin Soil Upturned", completed by publication in 1960, remained basically only a sign of the transitional period, when humanism stuck out in every possible way, but thereby the desired was presented as real. “Warming” of the images of Davydov (sudden love for “Varyukha-goryukha”), Nagulnov (listening to cock singing, secret love for Lushka), Razmetnov (shooting cats in the name of saving pigeons - popular at the turn of the 1950s-1960s "birds of the world" ) was emphasized "modern" and did not fit with the harsh realities of 1930, which formally remained the basis of the plot. In April 1960, Sholokhov was awarded the Lenin Prize for his novel Virgin Soil Upturned.

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

On December 10, 1965, in Stockholm, the King of Sweden presented Sholokhov with a diploma and a gold medal of the Nobel Prize winner, as well as a check for a sum of money. In his speech during the awards ceremony, the writer said that his goal was "to exalt a nation of workers, builders and heroes." Sholokhov is the only Soviet writer who received the Nobel Prize with the consent of the USSR authorities.

In 1966, he spoke at the XXIII Congress of the CPSU and spoke about the case of A.D. Sinyavsky and Yu. when they judged, not relying on strictly delimited articles of the Criminal Code, but “guided by revolutionary legal consciousness”, oh, these werewolves would have received the wrong measure of punishment! This statement made the figure of Sholokhov odious for a significant part of the intelligentsia in the USSR and in the West.

The writer L.K. Chukovskaya, in her letter to Sholokhov, predicted creative sterility after his speech at the XXIII Congress of the CPSU (1966) with defamation of A.D. Sinyavsky and Yu.M. Daniel. The prediction came true completely.

At by order of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of February 23, 1967 for outstanding services in the development of Soviet culture, the creation of works of art of socialist realism, which have received nationwide recognition and actively contribute to the communist education of workers, for fruitful social activities Sholokhov Mikhail Alexandrovich He was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor with the Order of Lenin and the Hammer and Sickle gold medal.

Written by Sholokhov in his best time is a high classic of the literature of the 20th century, with all the shortcomings that mark even his most outstanding works. One of the most essential features of Sholokhov's talent is his ability to see in life and reproduce in art all the richness of human emotions - from tragic hopelessness to cheerful laughter.

The contribution of Sholokhov, one of the leading masters of the literature of socialist realism, to world art is determined primarily by the fact that in his novels, for the first time in the history of world literature, the working people appear in all the wealth of types and characters, in such a fullness of social, moral, emotional life that puts them into a series of undying images of world literature. In his novels, the poetic heritage of the Russian people was combined with the achievements of the realistic novel of the 19th and 20th centuries; he discovered new, previously unknown connections between the spiritual and the material, between man and the outside world. In Sholokhov's epic, man, society, nature act as manifestations of the ever-creating stream of life; their unity and interdependence determine the originality of Sholokhov's poetic world. The writer's works have been translated into almost all languages ​​of the peoples of the USSR, as well as foreign languages.

At By order of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on May 23, 1980, for outstanding services in the development of Soviet literature and in connection with his seventy-fifth birthday, he was awarded the Order of Lenin and the second gold medal "Hammer and Sickle".

Member of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks / CPSU since 1932, member of the Central Committee of the CPSU since 1961, deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the 1st-9th convocations.

Until the end of his life he lived in his house in the village of Veshenskaya, Rostov Region. He died on February 21, 1984 from throat cancer caused by smoking. He was buried in the courtyard of the house where he lived.

Colonel (1943). He was awarded 6 Orders of Lenin (01/31/1939, 05/23/1955, 05/22/1965, 02/23/1967, 05/22/1975, 05/23/1980), Orders of the October Revolution (07/02/1971), Patriotic War of the 1st degree (09/23/1945) , medals, as well as orders and medals of foreign countries, including the Order of the GDR "Great Gold Star of Friendship of Peoples" (1964), the Bulgarian orders of Georgy Dimitrov (1975) and Cyril and Methodius 1st degree (1973).

Laureate of the Lenin Prize (1960), the Stalin Prize of the 1st degree (1941), the Nobel Prize in Literature (1965), the Sofia International Literary Prize (1975), the International Peace Prize in the field of culture of the World Peace Council (1975), the International Prize "Lotus" of the Asian and African Writers' Association (1978).

Honorary citizen of the city of Boguchar, Voronezh region (1979).

A bronze bust of M.A. Sholokhov was installed in the village of Vyoshenskaya, Rostov Region; monuments - in Moscow on Volzhsky and Gogolevsky boulevards, Rostov-on-Don, Millerovo, Rostov region, Boguchar, Voronezh region; a symbolic memorial on the territory of a boarding school (former male gymnasium) in the city of Boguchar, Voronezh region; memorial plaques - in the city of Boguchar, Voronezh region, on the building in which he studied and on the house in which he lived during his studies, as well as in Moscow, on the house in which he lived during his visits to the capital. Streets in many cities are named after him.

Sholokhov Mikhail Alexandrovich Born May 24, 1905 in x. Kruzhilin, Art. Vyoshenskaya, Rostov region

Father - a tradesman before the revolution, after, that is, under the Soviet regime, a food worker. He died in 1925. Mother was killed in 1942 during the bombing of Art. Vyoshenskaya by German aircraft. Studied at the beginning school, then in the men's gymnasium. He graduated from the 4th grade in 1918. Since 1923 he has been a writer. He joined the party in 1930, party card number 0981052. He was accepted as a member of the CPSU (b) by the Vyoshenskaya party organization. He was not subjected to party penalties, was not a member of the Trotskyist or other counter-revolutionary organizations, and had no deviations from the party line. He was drafted into the army in July 1941 with the rank of regimental commissar. Served as a specialist military correspondent. Demobilized in December 1945. Awarded the Order of the Father. war of the 1st class, medals. Was not in captivity.

Vedomosti of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR Heroes of Socialist Labor: biobibliogr. words. T.1. - Moscow, 2007.

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.

Russian Soviet writer and screenwriter, journalist, colonel

Mikhail Sholokhov

short biography

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, a 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 post 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. December 14, 1924 in the newspaper "Young Leninist" published the story "Mole", which opened a 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.

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:

If these thugs with a black conscience were caught in the memorable 1920s, when judges were not based on strictly delimited 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 Bazkovo 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 the sole authorship of Sholokhov 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 that were considered lost. The three examinations carried out: graphological, textological 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 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 its 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). Thus, on the basis of expertise, one can say 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. Sergey Bondarchuk.
• Born free (2005) - a TV movie based on the story of M. A. Sholokhov "The Foal", dir. Elena Lenskaya.

› Mikhail Sholokhov

Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov was born on May 24, 1905 in the Kruzhilin village of the village of Vyoshenskaya in the Donetsk district of the Don Cossacks region (now the Sholokhov district of the Rostov region).

At the same time, Sholokhov took part in the handwritten newspaper "New World", played in the performances of the Karginsky People's House, for which he anonymously composed the plays "General Pobedonostsev" and "An Extraordinary Day".

In October 1922 he moved to Moscow, where he worked as a loader, a bricklayer, and an accountant in a housing department on Krasnaya Presnya. At the same time, he attended classes of the Young Guard literary association.

In December 1924, the newspaper "Young Leninist" published his story "The Mole", which opened the cycle of Don stories: "Shepherd", "Ilyukha", "Foal", "Azure Steppe", "Family Man" and others. They were published in Komsomol periodicals, and then compiled three collections, "Don Stories" and "Azure Steppe" (both - 1926) and "About Kolchak, Nettles and Others" (1927). "Don Stories" was read in manuscript by Sholokhov's countryman, writer Alexander Serafimovich, who wrote a preface to the collection.

In 1925, the writer began to create the novel "Quiet Don" about the dramatic fate of the Don Cossacks during the First World War and the Civil War. During these years, together with his family, he lived in the village of Karginskaya, then in Bukanovskaya, and since 1926 - in Vyoshenskaya. In 1928, the first two books of the epic novel were published in the October magazine. The release of the third book (the sixth part) was delayed due to a rather sympathetic portrayal of the participants in the anti-Bolshevik Upper Don uprising of 1919. To release the book, Sholokhov turned to the writer Maxim Gorky, with the help of whom he obtained permission from Joseph Stalin to publish this part of the novel without cuts in 1932, and in 1934 he basically completed the fourth - last part, but began to rewrite it again, not without tightening ideological pressure. The seventh part of the fourth book was published in 1937-1938, the eighth - in 1940.

The work has been translated into many languages.

In 1932, the first book of his novel "Virgin Soil Upturned" about collectivization was published. The work was declared a perfect example of the literature of socialist realism and soon entered into all school programs, becoming mandatory for study.

During the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945), Mikhail Sholokhov worked as a war correspondent for the Soviet Information Bureau, the Pravda and Krasnaya Zvezda newspapers. He published front-line essays, the story "The Science of Hatred" (1942), and the novel "They Fought for the Motherland" (1943-1944), which was conceived as a trilogy, but was not completed.

The writer donated the State Prize, awarded in 1941 for the novel Quiet Flows the Don, to the USSR Defense Fund, and purchased four new rocket launchers for the front at his own expense.

In 1956, his story "The Fate of a Man" was published.

In 1965, the writer won 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 donated the prize for the construction of a school in his homeland - in the village of Vyoshenskaya, Rostov Region.

In recent years, Mikhail Sholokhov has been working on the novel They Fought for the Motherland. At this time, the village of Vyoshenskaya became a place of pilgrimage. Sholokhov was visited by visitors not only from Russia, but also from various parts of the world.

Sholokhov was engaged in social activities. He was a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the first to ninth convocations. Since 1934 - Member of the Board of the Union of Writers of the USSR. Member of the World Peace Council.

In the last years of his life, Sholokhov was seriously ill. He suffered two strokes, diabetes, then throat cancer.

On February 21, 1984, Mikhail Sholokhov died in the village of Vyoshenskaya, where he was buried on the banks of the Don.

The writer was an honorary doctor of philology from the Rostov and Leipzig universities, an honorary doctor of law from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

Since 1939 he was a full member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

Mikhail Sholokhov was twice awarded the title Hero of Socialist Labor (1967, 1980). Laureate of the State Prize of the USSR (1941), the Lenin Prize (1960), and the Nobel Prize (1965). Among his awards are six Orders of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution, the Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st degree, the medals "For the Defense of Moscow", "For the Defense of Stalingrad", "For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945".

In 1984, in his homeland in the village of Vyoshenskaya, Rostov Region, the State Museum-Reserve M.A. Sholokhov.

Since 1985, the Sholokhov Spring has been held annually in the village of Vyoshenskaya - the All-Russian literary and folklore festival dedicated to the writer's birthday.

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. Winner 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, a 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 post 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 judged 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 Western highest cultural authority" 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 the sole authorship of Sholokhov 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 that were considered lost. The three examinations carried out: graphological, textological 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 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 its 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). Thus, on the basis of expertise, one can say 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.