Biography of the writer. Biography of Sholokhov briefly

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 ataman 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.

A family

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

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

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

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

Artworks

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

Early stories

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

Quiet Don

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

During the Second World War, 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.

Very short biography (in a nutshell)

Born May 24, 1905 on the farm Kruzhilinsky (now the Rostov region). Father - Alexander Mikhailovich Sholokhov (1865-1926). Mother - Anastasia Danilovna (1871-1942). In 1919 he graduated from the Vyoshenskaya gymnasium. In 1922 he was sentenced to death for abuse of power, later the sentence was commuted to 1 year of hard labor. In 1924 he married Maria Gromoslavskaya. She had 4 children - 2 boys and 2 girls. In 1928 he wrote the first two volumes of the novel The Quiet Flows the Don, and the last, fourth volume, was published only in 1940. In 1965 he received the Nobel Prize. He died on February 21, 1984 in the village of Vyoshenskaya, Rostov Region, at the age of 78. He was buried in the courtyard of his house in the village of Vyoshenskaya. Main works: “Quiet Flows the Don”, “The Fate of a Man”, “They Fought for the Motherland”, “Virgin Soil Upturned”, “Nakhalyonok” and others.

Brief biography (detailed)

Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov - Soviet writer and public figure; twice Hero of Socialist Labor, full member of the Academy of Sciences, and also a Nobel Prize winner in literature. Sholokhov was born on May 24, 1905 on the farm Kruzhilinsky. Initially, he bore the surname Kuznetsov, but in 1912 he changed to his father's surname - Sholokhov.

In 1910, his family moved to the Karginovsky farm, where Mikhail studied at home with a local teacher. Then for 1 year the boy studied in Moscow at a men's gymnasium, and for 3 years at a gymnasium in the Voronezh region. He was forced to leave his studies and return home due to the outbreak of the First World War.

In 1922, the writer moved to Moscow for the purpose of further education. Here he met many poets of the Young Guard circle. In 1923, his first feuilleton, The Trial, appeared in the Youthful Pravda newspaper. It was followed by the feuilletons "Three" and "Inspector General". A year later, the story "The Mole" was published. In 1924, Sholokhov married an elementary school teacher, Maria Gromoslavskaya.

In 1925 he met Alexander Serafimovich, whom he later called one of his first teachers. In the meantime, the stories of the young writer appeared in the magazine, which were later combined into the cycles "Azure Steppe" and "Don Stories". At the end of 1926, he began working on the book The Quiet Flows the Don. In 1932, the first volume of the book "Virgin Soil Upturned" was published, which shocked the country's literary community. The second volume appeared only in 1959.

During the Great Patriotic War, the writer worked as a war correspondent and often visited the front. At the same time, he began publishing parts of his new novel, They Fought for the Motherland. In 1965, Sholokhov was awarded the Nobel Prize for his novel The Quiet Flows the Don. After the war, he was mainly engaged in social activities, and in recent years he became interested in fishing and hunting.

The writer died on February 21, 1984 in the village of Vyoshenskaya, Rostov region, at the age of 78. He was buried in the same place, in the courtyard of his house on the banks of the Don River.

Video short biography (for those who prefer to listen)

Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov - the largest Soviet prose writer, laureate of the Stalin (1941), Lenin (1960) and Nobel (1965) prizes. His great artistic talent, which gradually withered under the influence of Soviet ideological dogmas, manifested itself primarily in the epic novel Quiet Flows the Don, one of the pinnacles of 20th-century literature.

Sholokhov was born on the Don, was the illegitimate son of a Ukrainian woman, the wife of the Don Cossack A.D. Kuznetsova and a wealthy clerk (the son of a merchant, a native of the Ryazan region) A.M. Sholokhov. In early childhood, he bore the surname Kuznetsov and 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”; graduated from four classes of the gymnasium (which is more than that of the first Russian Nobel laureate in literature, I.A. Bunin).

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 they were “exploiters”. Young Mikhail was not distinguished by a passion for hoarding (like one of his future heroes, the son of a wealthy Cossack Makar Nagulnov) and took the side of the victorious force that established at least relative peace. He served in the food detachment, but arbitrarily reduced the taxation of the people of his circle, for which he was on trial. His elder friend and mentor (“mamunya” in letters addressed to her), member of the party since 1903 (Sholokhov - since 1932) E.G. Levitskaya, to whom “The Fate of a Man” was subsequently dedicated, believed that Grigory Melekhov’s “reelings” in “The Quiet Don” contain a lot of autobiographical 11, p. 128]. The young man changed a large number of professions, especially in Moscow, where he lived for a long time from the end of 1922 to 1926. Having established himself in literature, he settled on the Don in the village of Veshenskaya.

In 1923, Sholokhov published feuilletons, from the end of 1923 - stories saturated no longer with superficial feuilletonism, but with sharp drama and tragedy with a touch of melodrama. Most of these works were collected in the collections Don Stories (1925) and Azure Steppe (1926). 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 hacked-up communist food orderer, begin to love him like a son, and he leaves them, in Sholokhov’s early works, the characters are mostly sharply They are divided into positive (Red fighters, Soviet activists) and negative, sometimes "unalloyed" villains (whites, "bandits", kulaks and kulaks). Many characters have real prototypes, but Sholokhov sharpens almost everything, exaggerates; death, blood, torture, the pangs of hunger, he deliberately presents naturalistically. The favorite plot of the young writer, starting with "The Mole" (1923), is a deadly clash between the closest relatives: father and son, brothers. The neophyte Sholokhov invariably confirms his loyalty to the communist idea, emphasizing the priority of social choice over any human relationships, including family ones. In 1931, he republished Don Stories, supplementing the early collection with new ones, in which the comic prevailed; at the same time in “Virgin Soil Upturned” he combined comedy with drama, sometimes quite effectively. Then, for a quarter of a century, the stories were not reprinted, the author himself rated them low and returned them to the reader when, for lack of a new one, he had to recall the well-forgotten old.

In 1925, Sholokhov began a work about the fate of the Cossacks in 1917, during the Kornilov rebellion, under the title “Quiet Don” (and not “Donshchina”, according to a common legend). He quickly abandoned this idea, but a year later he began to work on The Quiet Don again, widely deploying pictures of the pre-war life of the Cossacks and the events of the World War. The first two books of the epic novel were published in 1928. 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 immediately preceding it) delayed work on the epic novel. In letters, including I.V. Stalin, Sholokhov tried to reveal the true state of affairs in the new society: the complete collapse of the economy, lawlessness, torture applied to collective farmers. He accepted the very idea of ​​collectivization and, in a softened form, with undeniable sympathy for the main characters - the communists, showed the processes of collectivization using the example of the Gremyachiy Log farm in the first book of Virgin Soil Upturned (1932). Even the rather flattened depiction of dispossession, the figure of the “right deviator” Razmetnov, etc. were 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. Ho as a whole, the work suited Stalin. The high artistic level of the book, as it were, proved the fruitfulness of communist ideas for art, created the illusion of freedom of creativity in the USSR. "Virgin Soil Upturned" was declared a perfect example of the literature of socialist realism.

The success of “Virgin Soil Upturned” directly or indirectly helped Sholokhov continue work on “The Quiet Don”, the publication of the third book (sixth part) of which was delayed due to a very sympathetic portrayal of the participants in the anti-Bolshevik Upper Don uprising of 1919. With the help of M. Gorky, Sholokhov obtained permission from Stalin for the publication of this book in its entirety (1932) and in 1934 basically completed the fourth, last one, but began to rewrite it again, probably not without the influence of the tightened political atmosphere. 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) there appeared a lot of journalistic, often didactically unambiguous pro-Bolshevik declarations, quite often contradicting the plot and figurative structure of the epic novel. But this does not at all confirm the theory of “two authors” or “author” and “co-author”, developed by skeptics who do not believe in the authorship of Sholokhov (A.I. Solzhenitsyn among them). In all likelihood, Sholokhov himself was his "co-author", preserving mainly the artistic world that he created in the early 30s. Although in 1938 the writer almost fell victim to a false political accusation, he nevertheless found the courage to end The Quiet Flows the Don with the complete collapse of his beloved hero Grigory Melekhov, a truth-seeker crushed by the wheel of cruel history.

In The Quiet Don, Sholokhov's talent burst out in full force - and was largely exhausted. The story “The Science of Hate” (1942), imbued with hatred for the Nazis, turned out to be below the average of the “Don Stories” in terms of artistic quality. The level of those printed in 1943-1944 was higher. chapters from the novel “They fought for the Motherland”, conceived as a trilogy, but never completed (in the 60s, Sholokhov wrote “pre-war” chapters with conversations about Stalin and the repressions of 1937 in the spirit of the already ended “thaw”, they were printed with banknotes). The work consists mainly of soldiers' conversations, oversaturated with jokes. In general, Sholokhov's failure in comparison not only with the first, but also with the second novel is obvious.

During the "thaw" Sholokhov created a work of high artistic merit - the story "The Fate of a Man" (1956). The second book of "Virgin Soil Upturned", published in 1960, remained basically only a sign of a transitional historical period. The “warming” of the images of Davydov (sudden love for Varyukha-goryukha), Nagulnov (listening to cock singing, etc.), Razmetnov (shooting cats in the name of saving pigeons) and others was emphasized “modern” and did not fit with the harsh realities of 1930 ., remaining the basis of the plot.

Human rights activist L.K. Chukovskaya predicted creative sterility to Sholokhov after his speech at the XXIII Congress of the CPSU (1966) with defamation of those convicted for literary works (the first trial of the Brezhnev era against writers) A.D. Sinyavsky and Yu.M. Daniel. Ho written by Sholokhov at his best time is a high classic of literature of the 20th century.

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.

Great Patriotic War 1941-1945 - a just, liberation war of the Soviet people for the freedom and independence of the Motherland from Nazi Germany and its allies. This is without a doubt one of the most significant events of the 20th century.

Many books have been written about the Great Patriotic War - poems, poems, stories, novels, novels. In my essay, only a small part of what is written about the war. Sholokhov's story "The Fate of Man" is imbued with deep, bright faith in man. At the same time, its title is symbolic, because it is not just the fate of the soldier Andrei Sokolov, but it is a story about the fate of a person, about the fate of the people. The writer is aware of his obligation to tell the world the harsh truth about the huge price paid by the Soviet people for the right of mankind to the future. All this is due to the outstanding role of this short story. “If you really want to understand why Russia won a great victory in the Second World War, watch this film,” wrote one English newspaper about the film “The Fate of a Man”, and therefore about the story itself.

This story was written in an amazingly short time, just a few days of hard work. However, his creative history takes many years: between a chance meeting with a man who became the prototype of Andrei Sokolov, and the appearance of "The Fate of a Man" 10 years passed. The critic M. Kokhta, in an article devoted to Sholokhov's story, writes: “The idea of ​​this story arose from the writer on the way. He then returned from a trip across the steppe, as the Veshenians say, unusually excited and for a long time was impressed by the meeting and acquaintance in the village of Volkhovskoye of the Yelanskaya village with some kind of driver and a boy, whom the driver led by the hand to the river crossing.

I will write a story about it, I will definitely write it, - the writer said, sharing his creative idea.

Sholokhov returned to this plan only 10 years later, to remind people of the tragic lessons of the past, to warn mankind about the formidable danger of new wars. The curse of the war that destroys the peaceful life of people, fascism, misanthropy, the inevitable accusation of warmongers carries this story - a merciless, truthful evidence of life, a work of great humanistic art.

What drew my attention to this story?

First of all, it embodies the idea of ​​the feat of arms of the people with the utmost clarity, truth, and genuine depth, it expresses admiration for the courage of ordinary people, their moral foundations have become the backbone of the country in times of trial.

And therefore, in the work I will try to determine the author's position in the story "The Fate of a Man"; show the heroism and courage of a soldier in the war; to reveal the problems and prospects of the story "The Fate of a Man".

My faithful assistants were the books of F. G. Biryukov “On the feat of the people. Life and work of M. A. Sholokhov”; A. I Metchenko, S. M. Petrov "History of Russian Soviet Literature"; M. A. Sholokhov "The Fate of Man"; electronic textbook and illustrations for this topic.

MAN AT WAR

Life and work of M. A. Sholokhov

M. A. Sholokhov was born on May 24, 1905 in the Kruzhilin village of the village of Veshenskaya in the Don District, the former Region of the Don Army (now the Veshenskaya District of the Rostov Region).

Kruzhilin is a large steppe farm, stretched between the Chir and Don rivers, not far from it was the panorama estate Yasenovka, where the writer's mother lived in the service for a long time. In the very center of the farm, on the church square, stood a small house covered with a chaconne, where the future writer was born and spent the first years of his childhood.

From birth, little Misha breathed wonderful steppe air over the boundless expanse of the steppe, and the hot sun scorched him, dry winds carried huge dusty clouds and baked his lips. And the quiet Don, along which the skiffs of the Cossack fishermen blackened, was indelibly reflected in his heart.

And the mowing in the loan, and the hard work of the steppe plowing, sowing, harvesting wheat - all this put line after line on the boy's appearance.

He played on the dusty, overgrown streets with cossacks of the same age.

Mother - half-Cossack, half-peasant. Being the daughter of a serf, who remained even after the "emancipation" on the landowner's land, from the age of twelve she went into the service

As a child, Mikhail Sholokhov was no different from his peers. Together with the Cossacks, he spent all his days on the Don, looked at Cossack weddings with all his eyes, loved to listen to fairy tales that Olga Mikhailovna told with great skill.

Probably, the origins of Mikhail Sholokhov's early work should be sought in his childhood. The life of the Don village, the Cossack life, bright characters - all this left its mark on the soul of an impressionable and observant boy.

He did not receive a real education, he studied only at a parochial school, but all his life he was engaged in self-education, read a lot and was considered an educated person in his circle.

From his father's library, he took books by Pushkin, Nekrasov, Turgenev, Chekhov, Tolstoy. Misha was drawn to knowledge early. Yielding to the request of their son, the parents began to teach him at a preschool age.

In 1910, the family moved to the Karginsky farm in connection with the arrival of his father in the service of the merchant Ozerov, and then to the trading house of Levochkin and Likhovidov.

In 1911, a local teacher Timofey Timofeevich Mrykhin was invited to Misha Sholokhov.

M. Sholokhov was 15 years old when he and his comrades pursued white bands in the steppes of the Upper Don.

In the autumn of 1922, Sholokhov went to Moscow. He was brought to the capital by a dream of teaching, of literary work. Moscow met him unkindly: it was not easy to find housing, and even more difficult - work.

At night, in a cramped little room, overcoming fatigue and sleep, Sholokhov read avidly, not parting with the dream of entering a workers' faculty or an institute. And when in August 1923 he got a job as an accountant in the housing department No. 803 on Krasnaya Presnya, finally, relatively tolerable conditions appeared for classes and creative work. He meets young writers. He made friends for life with Vasily Kudashev, head of the literary department of the Journal of Peasant Youth.

In September 1923, the first work of Sholokhov was finally published in the Komsomol newspaper Yunosheskaya Pravda. It was the feuilleton "Test". A month later, on October 30, the second feuilleton "Three" appeared in the same newspaper with a dedication to the Pokrovsky Rabfak. In April 1924, the third feuilleton by M. Sholokhov "The Inspector General" was published, and in the same year he saw his first work of art by the writer - "The Mole". In February 1925, the story "Food Commissar" and the first story "The Path of the Road" were published in "Young Leninist".

The publishing house "New Moscow" publishes the first collection of stories by M. Sholokhov "Don stories" with a preface by A. Serafimovich.

In 1925, the story "Bakhchevnik" was published on the pages of the magazine "Komsomolia".

1925 M. Sholokhov starts work on the novel "Donshchina".

In 1926, the writer stops work on the manuscript "Donshchina" and begins writing the first book of the novel "Quiet Flows the Don".

In 1926, the second collection "Azure Steppe" was published with a circulation of 5000 copies.

In 1927, the stories "About Kolchak, Nettles and Others" were published.

In 1929, a collection of short stories “The Shepherd. Two-wife."

In 1930, Don Stories.

In May 1943, the publication of Sholokhov's new novel "They Fought for the Motherland" began on the pages of Pravda.

After the release of the first book of The Quiet Flows the Don, the popularity of M. Sholokhov is growing rapidly not only in the country, but also abroad. Delegations and guests come to see the writer in Vyoshenskaya. He himself constantly visits collective farms, makes reports, meets people.

The fate of Sokolov

In the post-war works of M. Sholokhov, the lyrical authorial principle is noticeably enhanced. In 1956, the story "The Fate of a Man" was published in the Pravda newspaper.

In the story "The Fate of Man" the author "includes" himself in the story. Reflections, feelings of the author-narrator not only increase the emotional tension of the story, they allow you to see the true greatness, strength and beauty of an ordinary person Andrei Sokolov.

The ideology of fascism and war are linked in Sholokhov's story as a real embodiment of a specific evil. An evil that can and must be overcome.

There are two voices in the story: Andrey Sokolov “leads”, he tells his life; the author is a listener, a casual interlocutor. Drops a question. He will say a word where it is impossible to be silent, where it is necessary to cover someone else's unrestrained grief. Then suddenly his heart, disturbed by pain, will break through, speak in full force. In Sholokhov's story "The Fate of a Man" I heard another voice - a sonorous, clear children's voice, which seemed not to know the full measure of all the troubles and misfortunes that fall to the human lot.

I think that the very title of the story became a challenge to the old times, and I can prove it: the word “fate” was considered undesirable, because, as it was believed then, it smacked of mysticism, because it hides ideas about the predestination of a person’s life path, about the power of fatal circumstances over him . The very idea of ​​the possibility of the existence of providence, or fate, contradicted the official “man is the blacksmith of his own happiness”, “the master of his own destiny”. Some critics were also dissatisfied with the fact that Mikhail Aleksandrovich chose not a convinced communist or a glorified hero as the main character of the story, but a simple hard worker, an ordinary person - “like everyone else”, besides, with a “spoiled” biography, who passed German captivity. People like him were then officially considered traitors, they were amnestied (but not rehabilitated!) Only in 1953. Sholokhov showed whose hands held a rifle, turned the steering wheel of trucks with shells when it was necessary to rush to the front line through enemy fire, and came face to face with a hated enemy. Persistence, tenacity in the fight, the spirit of courage, camaraderie - these qualities come from the tradition of the Suvorov soldier, they were sung by Lermontov in the poem "Borodino", Gogol in the story "Taras Bulba", they were admired by Tolstoy. Andrey Sokolov has all these qualities. And even to a greater extent than ever in the past, because the tests on his lot were unprecedented. The life path of Andrei Sokolov, which seems to contain more than one person can bear, all this set the two poles of this work.

At one of the poles, we are talking about the tragic fate of a particular individual, a human unit - and this was a sign of the time when literature finally got the opportunity from depicting the exploits of the masses to turn to capturing the fate of individuals in the war.

At the other pole of the story, there is that degree of generalization that allows us to say that the fate of Andrei Sokolov is the fate of the entire Russian people who went through a terrible war, fascist camps, the loss of their closest people, but not completely broken. Such a combination within the framework of one work of concreteness and monumentality, private and generally significant is more characteristic of the epic genre. And it is not for nothing that critics started talking about the work of M. Sholokhov as an “epic story”. Every moment of Andrei Sokolov's personal history, every turn of his fate, perceived as deeply individual, is simultaneously projected onto history, onto the fate of his native people, of which he is an integral part.

Sholokhov does not reward his hero with an exceptional biography. It is significant that Andrei Sokolov begins to talk about himself with the words: “At first, my life was ordinary.” But in this “ordinary life”, the artist saw a lot of truly beautiful and sublime, poetic and humane, because in everyday cares and work, joys and sorrows that filled this life, an honest and modest, noble and selfless person is revealed.

You read Sholokhov's story and as if you see with your own eyes how a man in soldier's boots, in awkwardly repaired, burned-out protective trousers, in a soldier's padded jacket burned out in several places, rises above the world - a living embodiment of the memory of the war. This is the ultimate note of human grief, sounded at the beginning of the story. Curse war!

The story of irreparable losses, of terrible grief, is permeated by Sholokhov with faith in life, faith in man.

The “ring” composition of the story not only, as it were, closes everything Sokolov told about his life into a single circle of empathy, but also makes it possible with great power to highlight that unlost humanity that painted and exalted Sholokhov’s hero.

The immensity of the writer's intention, the artistic "super task" that he set before himself, is striking. The tragic history of human life, taken in its conditionality, in its connection with the events of the Second World War. The highest historical test for the people and the state and the tragic breakdown, the life of a person, on which all the misfortunes of the war fell

Here he appears before us from the boundless distance, from the boundless spring steppe, this man - "a tall, round-shouldered man" - and next to him is a boy of five or six years old, a blade of grass, trustingly clinging to a strong, destitute war. Orphan, the writer announces.

Trial by captivity

Sholokhov emphasizes the usual way of his hero in the war. Andrei Sokolov cannot be distinguished among those going to the front line, and he is captured under circumstances in which thousands of people found themselves. In captivity, where, it would seem, it was impossible to preserve human dignity, the beauty and grandeur of a simple Russian man was revealed with extraordinary force. A soldier is unbending when he answers to commandant Muller, who sentenced him to death for campaigning in a camp against hard labor. Müller offers to drink a glass of schnapps for the victory of German weapons allegedly won in Stalingrad. Sokolov refuses. Muller suggested something else: “Do you want to drink to our victory? In that case, drink to your death." This whole scene is not only an example of Sokolov's fearlessness, but also his challenge to those rapists who wanted to humiliate the Soviet people. After drinking a glass of schnapps, Sokolov thanks for the treat and adds: "I'm ready, Herr Kommandant, let's go, sign me up." And so, recalling the clash with the camp commandant Muller, Andrey Sokolov remarks: “And this time death passed me by, only a chill was drawn from it.” But even more difficult trials await the hero ahead. A family died, on Victory Day a German sniper's bullet cut short the life of Anatoly's son. “I buried my last joy and hope in a foreign, German land, my son’s battery hit, seeing off his commander on a long journey, and as if something broke in me,” Andrei Sokolov recalls with tears in his eyes.

Numerous testimonies indicate that this is exactly how, with dignity, Soviet people behaved when they fell into the clutches of the Nazis - both during interrogations, and in clashes with the commandant's office and guards, and even before execution. They killed sentries, digged, jumped on the go from train cars, established contacts with anti-fascists.

He is looking for any way to escape from captivity, he knows what can happen in case of failure. But still taking risks. The first attempt to escape ended with the fact that they caught up with him, poisoned him with dogs. The second turned out to be successful, he escaped by car across the front line, brought a German with important documents.

The epic tone of the story is majestic and courageous. Like a chronicle legend, you read exciting disturbing pages about the mortal danger hanging over the Motherland. The Motherland has two symbols - birch and oak. And each of them in its own way corresponds to the concept of our Motherland and our people: birch - tenderness, poetry; oak - unbending power, ingrown with age-old roots in native soil. There is in Sokolov something that resembles an oak that resists all hurricanes, and at the same time a birch as an image of tenderness, warmth of feelings, responsiveness.

"Forefront. The hardest battle with the enemy, far superior in manpower and technology. People do not know how to rest from incessant attacks, gunfire, air raids, mortar fire, tank columns. They are hammering iron earth, burrowing into trenches. Above them - the scorching sun, steppe dust. The main thing at the same time is to cultivate a devoted love for humanity, to be its brother, an accomplice in labor and military affairs.

I believe that the author's idea about the price at which victory was bought was embodied in the tragic results of the path of the hero of The Fate of Man. Andrey Sokolov, having gone through the crucible of war, lost everything: the family died, the hearth was destroyed.

M. V. Isakovsky has this poem:

Enemies burned their own hut,

They killed his entire family.

Where should the soldier go now?

To whom to bear their sorrow?

Sokolov went to the front as a man. And he returned as a man. He did not lose the makings of a great soul, he did not let himself be destroyed by vodka.

A man of great spiritual generosity

Peaceful life has come, it's time for spring awakening, it's time for hopes And Andrei Sokolov looks at the world with eyes "as if sprinkled with ashes", "filled with inescapable mortal longing." “Why did you, life, cripple me like that? Why so distorted? I don’t have an answer either in the dark or in the clear sun No, and I won’t wait! - the hero complains bitterly. Life was cruel to a person, but could not break him, kill his soul. Sholokhov, a humanist writer, drawing the heroic character of Andrei Sokolov, argues that resilience is a manifestation of the highest humanity. He never shared the views of those who believed that courage and courage do not get along with tenderness and kindness, generosity and responsiveness. In these manifestations of humanity, the artist saw a sure sign of a strong, unyielding character. His Andrei Sokolov is a man of great spiritual generosity and charm.

Sholokhov avoids the details of front-line life, descriptions of the hero's camp ordeals. Andrei Sokolov himself admits that it is hard for him to remember this, and he talks with an experienced front-line soldier. Attention is focused on the “shock”, climax moments, when the character of the hero manifests itself most strongly and deeply. Farewell on the platform - “We came to the station, but I can’t look at Irina from pity: my lips are swollen from tears, my hair has come out from under the scarf, and my eyes are cloudy, like those of a person touched by the mind”; captivity; reprisal against a traitor; clash with Muller; son's funeral; meeting with the boy Vanyusha - these are the milestones of the path of Andrei Sokolov.

With what painfully restrained grief Andrei Sokolov speaks about this boy: “Such a small bird, but he has already learned to sigh. Is it his business? I ask: “Where is your father, Vanya?” Whispers: "He died at the front." “And mom?” “Mom was killed by a bomb on the train when we were traveling.” - "Where did you go?" - “I don’t know, I don’t remember” - “And you don’t have any relatives here?” - "No one." - "Where do you sleep?" - "And where it is necessary."

This childish sigh, this orphanhood weighs like a heavy weight on the scales of history, on the scales that accuse those who started the war. High humanism pervades this short tale of ruined childhood, of a childhood that knew sorrow and parting so early.

And what an indestructible force of goodness, the beauty of the human character is revealed to us in Andrei Sokolov, in the way he saw the baby, in his decision to adopt Vanyusha. He brought joy back to childhood. He protected him from pain, suffering and sorrow.

It was a feat, not only in the moral sense of the word, but also in the heroic inscription.

It seemed that the war had drawn everything out of this man, he had lost everything. But even in the terrible, devastating loneliness, he remained a Man.

It was here, in Andrei Sokolov's relationship to childhood, to Vanyusha, that humanism won its greatest victory. He triumphed over the anti-humanity of fascism, over destruction and loss - the inevitable companions of war.

He conquered death itself!

The main protagonist of the story is not a romantic loner who sacrificially burns himself in the name of a higher goal, but a person who adequately represents the people in harsh and tragic circumstances and shows qualities that do not distinguish him from other people, but bring him closer to them. Among the characters in The Fate of a Man, an unnamed doctor is remembered, who accomplishes his feat courageously and modestly. “This is what a real doctor means! He did his great work both in captivity and in the dark, ”Sokolov exclaims. Only a few lines are devoted to the doctor, but his image hovers next to the image of Andrei Sokolov as the embodiment of the same moral forces that make a person invincible.

The illusion of the reality of Sokolov's image is so strong that even in criticism he was sometimes considered as a real person, and the plot of the story is reduced to the fate of the hero, often not noticing that "The Fate of a Man" is a product of a complex artistic structure. Its originality cannot be understood without clarifying the role that belongs to the image of the author. This image is ambiguous: he is both an author-narrator and at the same time an accidental interlocutor of the protagonist, “his brother” and “chauffeur”, who also “had spent the whole war behind the steering wheel”. Many critics saw in him only the interlocutor of the protagonist. But this is his “temporary” role, voluntarily taken on by himself (as he appears in Sokolov’s perception), but we also hear the voice of a great artist, a man also of a difficult fate, involuntarily fall under the power of his mood, follow the course of his thoughts, ponder his judgments about life and people - the most important issues of reality.

The story about the unfortunate driver develops into a reflection on the people and their historical path, about the man and his fate.

I believe that the author is not an indifferent witness, he, shocked by the mournful tale of irretrievable losses in the life of his interlocutor, reflects on his fate, his strengths, opportunities, his duty and right. The author's thought expands the boundaries of the narrative; the compassion that gripped the narrator did not give the story a sentimental tone, because what the hero told caused not only pity, but also pride in the Russian man, admiration for his courage, the beauty of his soul. The author confesses his love and respect for this man when, with faith in justice and the reason of history, he says: “Two orphaned people, two grains of sand thrown into foreign lands by a hurricane of unprecedented strength. Is there something ahead of them? And I would like to think that this Russian man, a man of unbending will, will survive, and one will grow up near his father’s shoulder, who, having matured, will be able to endure everything and overcome everything in his path, if his Motherland calls him to this. In the feat of a simple man, the artist saw harsh historical lessons, in his spiritual essence - the hope of the world. The fate of the hero was illuminated by the light of history.

In the story “The Fate of a Man”, the idea of ​​patriotism did not prevent Sholokhov from recalling something else, without which patriotism becomes declarative, namely, about the personal good of a person, about his happiness, about the fact that the Motherland, which her sons faithfully serve, should be generous and affectionate to them. The writer raises the question of responsibility to those who honestly fulfilled their duty to the motherland and humanity, speaks of humanism as the highest principle of life order and human relationships. It was precisely the deeply humane motives that forced the author, who excitedly spoke about the fate of Andrei Sokolov, to hide from the child the “burning, stingy male tear” that had welled up, so as not to overshadow his childhood and not cloud his “eyes as clear as the sky.” D. Blagoy wrote well: “Tell the author about the boy’s eyes: bright as the sky, and it would turn out to be an inexpressive stamp. But this folk, diminutive, caressing, almost lullaby form of the same word - sparkles rainbow in this context, like a precious stone, like a diamond of the purest water.

Patriotism, as loyalty to the Fatherland, and humanism, as responsibility to humanity, act in the highest artistic synthesis, and the story takes on the meaning of philosophical reflection on the fundamental problems of modern life.

All Sholokhov's books, true to the harsh truth of life, the interests of goodness, beauty and humanity, belong to our people, reminding people of their responsibility for the fate of the world.

Sholokhov never forgot what wars cost and what indelible marks they leave in the hearts of people, he is always sensitive to the troubles of the people. For him, a lighter approach to this topic is acceptable, when the war does not seem to be such a dangerous and burdensome business.

Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov is a great writer, a truthful chronicler of the Soviet era, a prominent statesman and public figure. The name of M. A. Sholokhov is known to all mankind. His prominent role in the world literature of the twentieth century cannot be denied even by the opponents of socialism. Sholokhov's works are likened to epoch-making frescoes. During the Great Patriotic War, the writer faced the task: to smash the enemy with his full of burning hatred, to strengthen the love for the Motherland of the Soviet people. In the early spring of 1946, i.e., for outstanding services in the development of Soviet culture, for the creation of works of art that received a nationwide vocation, for fruitful social activities, M.A. Sholokhov was awarded the high title of Hero of Socialist Labor.

The name of the author is inextricably linked with the history of Soviet literature, with the establishment of a new creative method in it - the method of socialist realism. Sholokhov - the artist gave birth to the era of revolutionary struggle. He revealed this era in all its complexity and harsh truth to the reader. The great revolutionary events determined the psychological depth of feelings and characters, situations and conflicts, the dramatic content and epic scope of Sholokhov's works.

In his books, Sholokhov revealed the rich spiritual world of the people, their inexhaustible talent, moral integrity, the eternal desire for light and truth; raised huge layers of folk life, created vivid typical images, imbued with unfading poetry and truth. In the national, folk in spirit and form, the works of Sholokhov's ideological and philosophical depth are fused with high skill.

Mikhail Sholokhov artistically embodied the character and fate of the Russian people in the tragic twentieth century. Developing Tolstoy's traditions, the writer created full-blooded epic pictures of people's life in its decisive moments: world wars, revolutions, and critical years of collectivization.

The whole life and work of Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov, the chronicler of the Soviet era, was devoted to selfless service to the Soviet people, to the cause of communism.

Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov, delegate of the 18th - 26th congresses of the CPSU, deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of 1st - 11th convocations, twice Hero of Socialist Labor. Awarded with six Orders of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution, the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st class; medals: "For the Defense of Moscow", "For the Defense of Stalingrad", "For the Victory over Germany", the gold medal named after A. Fadeev, the Order of the "Big Golden Star of Peoples' Friendship" - GDR, the Order of Sukhe-Bator - Mongolian People's Republic, the Order of Georgy Dimitrov - NRB, Order of Cyril and Methodius - NRB. He is a laureate of the Lenin Prize, the USSR State Prize, the Nobel Prize, the International Peace Prize in the field of culture of the World Peace Council, the Sofia International Literary Prize, the All-Polish Golden Ear Prize - Poland, the Lotus International Prize of the Association of Asian and African Writers.

The name of M. A. Sholokhov will forever remain in the hearts of people.

CONCLUSION

How many wars in the world! How terrible it becomes to live! The war cost people dearly. It was, above all, a war of nerves.

Sholokhov in the story "The Fate of a Man" rejects any superficial "reflection". He fully reveals the phenomena, does not bypass the difficult. But still, the main thing for him remains the fact of how our people overcame the seemingly insurmountable, what is the mystery of the Russian character, and Sholokhov every time, referring to the battles that have died down, recalls the legendary, unprecedented in history feat of the people, which showed even more gained in the most severe test the heroic power, "damask fortress".

When I read the works of M. A. Sholokhov about the Great Patriotic War, I think that people need not so much - just to feel the pain of another person as their own.

How simple and somehow impossible! After all, everyone is human, everyone has mothers and fathers, wives and husbands, sons and daughters. Everyone has cried at some point when hurt. I know what grief is, how hard the loss of loved ones is. And yet bombs explode and children die.

People kill each other in Russia, in Afghanistan, in Chechnya

Our hearts have hardened, pressed down by stone slabs of indifference. Our ears do not want to hear, and our eyes do not want to see.

From myself, I want to wish: “Let everyone read Sholokhov's works about the war in order to remember the tragedy that befell our people more than 60 years ago. His books do not allow to calm down, awaken the thought of the unnaturalness of war, the evil and violence that it brings. The story brings up hatred, without which it was impossible to defeat a strong and stubborn enemy.

What makes the greatest impression on me in Sholokhov's books is their scale and humanity. If you have ever read his description of the Don region, this part of Russia with its vast, rich plains and the majestic Don River, then this is unforgettable. But Sholokhov paints not only the nature of this region, but also the human landscape.

His heroes are living people who belong to the Don region and to whom, as the plot develops, this region eventually begins to belong too. They transform the edge, and as it changes, they themselves change. Sholokhov does not idealize his heroes, they are not saints molded from plaster, no, they are living people with their own strengths and weaknesses. That is why their tragedies move us so much, and why their successes make such a deep impression on us. We feel that we are observing life itself in all its diversity, how it changes and develops.