Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov May 24, 1905, Kruzhilinsky farm, Veshenskaya village, Donetsk district, Don Cossack Host region, Russian Empire — February 21, 1984, Veshenskaya village, Veshensky district, Rostov region, RSFSR, USSR — Russian Soviet writer, journalist and screenwriter. War correspondent (1941-1945). Colonel (1943). Laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1965 — «for the artistic power and integrity of the epic about the Don Cossacks at a turning point for Russia»), the Stalin Prize (1941), the Lenin Prize (1960). Full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1939). Twice Hero of Socialist Labor (1967, 1980).

Youth

M. A. Sholokhov was born on May 24, 1905, on the Kruzhilin farm in the Veshenskaya village (now the Kruzhilinsky farm in the Sholokhov district of the Rostov region).

His father, Aleksandr Mikhailovich, was born in 1865 in the Ryazan province, did not belong to the Cossacks, was a «shibai» (livestock buyer), sowed grain on purchased Cossack land, served as a clerk in a commercial enterprise of a farm scale, a manager at a steam mill, etc. His father’s grandfather was a third-guild merchant, originally from the city of Zaraysk, he moved with his large family to the Upper Don region in the mid-1870s, bought a house with a farmstead and began buying grain.

Mother, Anastasia Danilovna, was born in 1871, the daughter of a peasant migrant to the Don, a former serf of the Chernigov province. For a long time she was in service at the Yasenevka estate. The orphan was forcibly married by the landowner Popova, for whom she served, to the son of the village ataman Kuznetsov. But later she left her husband and went to Alexander Sholokhov. Their son Mikhail was born illegitimate and was registered under the surname 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 Karginskaya village), and Mikhail received the surname Sholokhov. In 1910, the family left the Kruzhilin farm and moved to the Kargin farm: Alexander Mikhailovich entered the service of a Kargin merchant. The father invited a local teacher, Timofey Timofeevich Mrykhin, to teach the boy to read and write. In 1912, Mikhail entered the second grade of the Karginskaya ministerial (not parochial, as some of the writer’s biographers claim) elementary school. He sat at the same desk with Konstantin Ivanovich Kargin, the future writer who wrote the story «The Melon Grower» in the spring of 1930. In 1914, his father brought his son to Moscow. Mikhail studied for one year in the preparatory class of the 8th Moscow Men’s (Shelaputinskaya) Gymnasium. Exactly one year later, the boy’s parents transferred him to the gymnasium in the city of Boguchar, Voronezh province. From 1915 to 1918, Mikhail Sholokhov lived in the family of the religious teacher D. Tishansky. At this time, ten-year-old Mikhail began to compose his first stories and wrote them down in a notebook. His teacher Olga Pavlovna Strakhova praised his essays in class, and read some of them out loud. Before the arrival of the occupying German troops in the city, according to Mikhail, he dropped out of school and went home to the farm (The family at that time lived on the Pleshakov farm, which is on the Don opposite the village of Yelanskaya, where his father worked as a manager of a steam mill. In Pleshki, the Sholokhovs lived right at the mill, in the delivery room, in a small stone house).

In 1918-1919, Mikhail Sholokhov graduated from the fourth grade of the Veshenskaya Gymnasium.

In 1920, the family moved again to the village of Karginskaya (after the arrival of Soviet power), where his father, Alexander Mikhailovich, received the position of head of the Procurement Office No. 32 of the Donprodkom, and his son Mikhail became a teacher for the elimination of illiteracy among the adult population in the Latyshov farm, then a clerk of the Karginsky village revolutionary committee.

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

On December 2, 1921, Mikhail was hired as an assistant accountant at Procurement Office No. 32 of the Donprodkom, where his father, Alexander Mikhailovich Sholokhov, had previously worked.

On August 31, 1922, while working as a village tax inspector, M. A. Sholokhov was arrested and was held in the district center under investigation. He was sentenced to death. «I was pursuing a tough line, and the times were tough; I was a big commissar, I was tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal for abuse of power…» the writer later said. «I waited for death for two days… And then they came and released me…». Sholokhov was in custody until September 19, 1922. His father gave a large cash bail for him and took him home on bail until the trial. His parents brought a new birth certificate to the trial, and he was released as a minor (according to the new birth certificate, his age was reduced by 2.5 years). This was already in March 1923. Trials were held by «troikas» at that time, and the sentences were strict. It was easy 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 correctional 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, he was unable to enroll in the preparatory courses of the workers’ faculty due to the lack of the required work experience and the direction of the Komsomol, of which he was not a member. At first, he worked as a loader, general laborer, bricklayer, then got a job in the house management of the workers’ housing and construction cooperative «Take an example!», whose chairman was L. G. Mirumov (Mirumyan). He lived in a dormitory. He was engaged in self-education, took part in the work of the literary group «Young Guard», attended classes taught by V. B. Shklovsky, O. M. Brik, N. N. Aseyev. Active assistance in organizing M. A. Sholokhov’s daily Moscow life and in promoting the first literary works with his autograph was provided by a career employee of the EKU GPU, a Bolshevik with pre-revolutionary experience — Leon Galustovich Mirumov (Mirumyan), whom M. A. Sholokhov met in the village of Veshenskaya before arriving in Moscow. In September 1923, a feuilleton — «Test» was published in the Komsomol newspaper «Yunosheskaya Pravda» («Young Leninist») under the signature «Mikh. Sholokh», a month later a second feuilleton — «Three» appeared, and then a third — «The Inspector General».

It was not possible to live and study in Moscow, and in December 1923 M. A. Sholokhov returned to Karginskaya, and then to the village of Bukanovskaya, where he proposed to Lidiya Gromoslavskaya, one of the daughters of the former village ataman Pyotr Yakovlevich Gromoslavsky. But the former ataman said: «Take Maria, 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, whose director at that time was F. D. Kryukov). In December 1923 — M. A. Sholokhov left Moscow for the village of Karginskaya, to his parents, and together with them — to Bukanovskaya, where his fiancée Lidiya Gromoslavskaya and future wife Maria Petrovna Gromoslavskaya lived (since their father Pyotr Yakovlevich Gromoslavsky insisted on M. A. Sholokhov marrying his eldest daughter Maria).

January 11, 1924 — the wedding of M. A. and M. P. Sholokhov in the Pokrovskaya Church of the village of Bukanovskaya. The marriage was registered at the Podtelkovskiy registry office (the village of Kumylzhenskaya).

In 1927, he was interrogated in the case of Kharlampy Vasilyevich Ermakov, who had already been shot by that time, which he was not told about. He explained his connections with Ermakov by the fact that Ermakov was the prototype of the main character of Sholokhov’s novel. At the same time, according to the report of September 4, 1928, from the head of the Don District Department of the OGPU Bolotov, who interrogated Sholokhov, to the authorized representative of the OGPU SKK and DSSR (North Caucasus Territory and Dagestan USSR) E. G. Evdokimov, it was said: “During the conversation with him , I managed to find out some biographical information from him. Thus, he says that he himself is of non-local origin, but his mother is a Cossack from the Kruzhilinsky farm, he is silent about his father, but talks about his stepfather, a commoner, who adopted him. The stepfather was engaged in trade for a time, and was also something like a Manager. It turns out that M. A. Sholokhov was brought up by a Cossack mother in the atmosphere of Cossack life.

Creative maturity

The first story «Beasts» (later «Food Commissar»), sent by M. A. Sholokhov to the almanac «Molodogvardeets», was not accepted by the editors. On December 14, 1924, the story «Birthmark» was published in the newspaper «Molodoy Leninets». In the first issue of «Komsomolia» — a militant literary and artistic magazine of Soviet youth (its editor at that time was Alexander Zharov), published in April 1925, Sholokhov’s story «Melon Garden» appeared. Then in 1926, Sholokhov published his stories «Mortal Enemy», «Azure Steppe», «Bank Laborers» here, which opened a cycle of Don stories: «Shepherd», «Ilyukha», «Foal», «Family Man», «Two-Husband», etc. Sholokhov became an active contributor to the magazine; in the ninth issue of Komsomoliya for 1926, on page 73, there was a friendly epigram on Sholokhov and a wonderful caricature made by the young artists Kukryniksy, who were just starting out on their careers. The stories published in the Komsomol periodicals made up three collections that came out one after the other: Don Stories, Azure Steppe (both published by Novaya Moskva in 1926), and About Kolchak, Nettles, and Other Things (1927).

In mid-1925, Mikhail Sholokhov met Alexander Serafimovich. The author of Iron Stream highly appreciated the talent of the young author — Sholokhov’s first book of stories was published with a preface by Serafimovich.

In his interviews and autobiographies, Sholokhov reported that he began writing «Quiet Flows the Don» (originally titled «Donshchina») in October 1925. At that time, he lived in the village of Bukanovskaya in the house of his wife’s parents. At first, his wife’s relatives were ironic about the writing activities of the twenty-year-old Sholokhov. Maria Petrovna was especially worried about her husband — God forbid, Mishka will go crazy! — when Mikhail Sholokhov did not know sleep or rest for two or three nights, working on the future novel. Having written 5-6 printed sheets, Mikhail Sholokhov stopped working, began to think about a more comprehensive novel. The plans of the young writer caused misunderstanding, they were considered a useless passion of youth. During the war, the manuscripts of «Donshchina» were lost. After returning to Karginskaya, the family had an eldest daughter, Svetlana (born in 1926, Karginskaya village), then sons Alexander (born in 1930-1990, Rostov-on-Don), Mikhail (born in 1935, Moscow), and daughter Maria (born in 1938, Veshenskaya).

In 1926, Sholokhov’s father, Alexander Mikhailovich, died, having just turned sixty. Mikhail Sholokhov decided to acquire his own home. Veshenskaya village was chosen as his permanent residence. «This was connected with my work,» M. A. Sholokhov would later explain. At first, the young family rented two rooms for an apartment, and in 1928 they bought a house with three rooms and a small courtyard. In this house on Bolshaya Street (now Sholokhovskaya Street), Mikhail Alexandrovich wrote almost all of «Quiet Flows the Don.»

It took Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov about three years to work on the first two volumes of «Quiet Flows the Don». The writer himself gave the dates: «The first book was ready by September 1927, and the second by March 1928». Sholokhov offered the manuscript of the first book of «Quiet Flows the Don» to Goslitizdat, but it was rejected. Sholokhov took it to the magazine «October», but it was rejected there too. Only after the intervention of A. S. Serafimovich, the editor-in-chief of the magazine, the manuscript was sent to typeset without any abbreviations. However, the third book of the novel did not appear for a long time, and was subsequently also published in the magazine «October» with interruptions and some abbreviations until October 1932. In October 1930, he was accepted as a candidate for membership in the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (not having previously been a member of the Komsomol, since the Veshensky District Committee had refused to accept him back in 1927). From 1932, he was a member of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). He was soon elected as a member of the Rostov Regional Executive Committee.

From 1931, Sholokhov began collaborating with Pravda as its special correspondent.

He spoke out against gross violations of the law during the period of collectivization, and addressed a letter to I. V. Stalin «to investigate not only the cases of those who mocked the collective farmers and the Soviet government, but also the cases of those whose hand directed these actions.»

In October 1932, he attended a reception at the house of A. M. Gorky on M. Nikitskaya Street, along with other writers and members of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). The meeting discussed the need to create a new writers’ organization, the Union of Writers of the USSR. Among those invited to the meeting with the leaders of the state, I. V. Stalin, V. M. Molotov, K. E. Voroshilov, and L. M. Kaganovich, were A. Fadeyev, V. Katayev, L. Leonov, L. Seifullina, M. Koltsov, E. Bagritsky, S. Marshak, F. Panferov, and others.

On October 28, M. A. Sholokhov met with Stalin in the Kremlin.

In 1932, together with Yu. B. Lukin, who came to Veshenskaya on behalf of Goslitizdat, he prepared the third book of Quiet Flows the Don for typesetting. Later, together with Lukin, he edited the first and second books of the novel.

In 1933, Goslitizdat separately released the third book of the novel (And Quiet Flows the Don. Book 3. Goslitizdat, 1933. 388 p.). Then, in the same year, all three books were reissued in the series «Cheap Library of OGIZ» (And Quiet Flows the Don. In 3 books — revised edition — Book 1. 399 p.; Book 2. 416 p.; Book 3. 420 p.).

In 1934, he continued working on «And Quiet Flows the Don» and «Virgin Soil Upturned». He traveled to Moscow. On June 14, he met with Stalin in the Kremlin. This was another intercession of the writer for ordinary workers, against the practice of forcible confiscation of grain. After the meeting, Stalin created a commission and a week later the Politburo approved the resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and the Council of People’s Commissars «On assistance to collective farms in the Northern Region of the AChK».

From August 17 to September 1, Mikhail Sholokhov took part in the work of the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers. He was elected to the presidium of the congress, then to the first Board of the Union of Soviet Writers together with A. Fadeyev, I. Ehrenburg, L. Leonov, M. Zoshchenko, V. Veresayev, D. Bedny, F. Panferov, F. Gladkov, A. Shcherbakov.

In September, the Soviet Writer publishing house published the novel Virgin Soil Upturned (Book 1), edited by L. Schmidt.

On January 28, 1935, the writer attended the opening of the 7th Congress of Soviets. On March 6, Chapter 1 of Book 4 of «Quiet Flows the Don» was first published in the Izvestia newspaper.

In August 1936, M. A. Sholokhov was elected to the delegation to the International Peace Congress.

In 1937, despite being very busy, M. A. Sholokhov was elected as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.

In 1938, Sholokhov was under threat of arrest, which the Chekist E. G. Evdokimov petitioned Stalin about.

During the Great Terror, he spoke out in defense of those arrested. Sholokhov was not the first to write to Stalin about the abuses of the NKVD, but he was the only Soviet writer who openly stated that the NKVD investigation system was unacceptable not only in relation to his relatives, but also to all defendants:

T. Stalin! This method of investigation, when an arrested person is uncontrollably handed over to the investigators, is deeply flawed; this method has led and will inevitably lead to mistakes. Those who are in charge of the investigators are interested in only one thing: whether the defendant has given evidence, whether the case is moving forward…

We must put an end to the shameful system of torture used on those arrested. We must not allow continuous interrogations for 5-10 days. Such a method of investigation disgraces the glorious name of the NKVD and does not allow us to establish the truth.

• Sholokhov to Stalin I.V., February 16, 1938

In 1939 he was awarded the Order of Lenin, was a delegate to the 18th Congress of the CPSU, and was elected a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

In March 1941, the publishing house «Khudozhestvennaya Literatura» first published the full text of all four books of the novel «Quiet Flows the Don», published in one volume with an afterword by Yu. B. Lukin, a dictionary of dialect vocabulary and engravings made from drawings by S. G. Korolkov. The circulation of the publication was 100 thousand copies.

On June 23, the writer spoke at a rally in front of residents of the village of Veshenskaya in connection with the attack of Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union. In the first days of July, he was called up for military service.

In 1941-1945 he served as a war correspondent for the Sovinformburo, the newspapers Pravda and Krasnaya Zvezda (along with A. Tolstoy, I. Ehrenburg, A. Platonov). In 1941 he was awarded the military rank of regimental commissar. Carrying out assignments from editors, Sholokhov was in the active army during the war: August-October 1941 — on the Western Front; October-December 1941 — on the Southern Front; December 1941 — January 1942 — on the Southwestern Front; January-September 1942 — on the Southern Front; September 1942 — May 1943 — on the Stalingrad Front; May 1943 – March 1945 – on the Western Front; March-May 1945 – on the 3rd Belorussian Front.

In February 1942, Sholokhov flew a bomber to Kuibyshev on a call from the head of the Soviet Information Bureau, but the plane capsized during landing. Four people died immediately. The pilot suffered a broken spine, and Sholokhov was seriously concussed.

In June 1942 – during the bombing of the village of Veshenskaya – the writer’s mother, Anastasia Danilovna, died in the courtyard of M. A. Sholokhov’s house.

On June 22, 1942, the newspaper Pravda published the story «The Science of Hatred», and in May 1943, Pravda and Krasnaya Zvezda published the first chapters of the novel «They Fought for the Motherland» in several issues.

On May 9, 1945, by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov was awarded the medal «For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945».

He was demobilized in December 1945 with the rank of colonel.

Children

1926, February 9. Birth of the first child, Svetlana, in the village of Karginskaya.

1930, May 18. Birth of son Alexander. Place of birth — Rostov-on-Don. Alexander was married to Violeta Gosheva, the daughter of the Prime Minister of Bulgaria Anton Yugov. Graduated from the Moscow Agricultural Academy named after K. A. Timiryazev, candidate of agricultural sciences. Died on September 20, 1990.

1935, May 23. Birth of son Mikhail. Place of birth — Moscow. Mikhail’s son — politician A. M. Sholokhov.

1938, January 3. Birth of daughter Maria. Place of birth — the village of Veshenskaya. Graduated from the Philological Faculty of Moscow State University named after M. V. Lomonosov, worked in the prose department of the Moscow publishing house «Sovremennik».

List of Sholokhov’s works

«Birthmark» story
«Don Stories»
«Azure Steppe»
«Quiet Flows the Don»
«Virgin Soil Upturned»
«They Fought for the Motherland»
«The Fate of Man»
«The Science of Hatred»
«A Word about the Motherland»

Early Stories

In 1923, M. A. Sholokhov’s feuilletons were published in newspapers. Beginning in 1924, his stories appeared in magazines, which were later combined into collections of «Don Stories» and «Azure Steppe» (1926).

Quiet Flows the Don

Sholokhov gained Russian and international fame with his novel Quiet Flows the 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 plot lines, 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, never “comes to the Reds” at the end of the story. This caused 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, «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, and the novel was also successful in the East.

«Virgin Soil Upturned»

The novel «Virgin Soil Upturned» (vol. 1 — 1932, v. 2 — 1959) is dedicated to collectivization in the Don and the «25-thousander» movement. Here the author expresses his assessment of the course of collectivization; the images of the main characters and the pictures of collectivization are ambiguous. The second volume of «Virgin Soil Upturned» was lost during the Great Patriotic War and restored later.

War Works

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 nature («A Word about the Motherland», «The Struggle Continues» (1948), «Light and Darkness» (1949), «The Executioners Will Not Escape the Trial of the People!» (1950), etc.).

Nobel Prize

In 1958, Boris Pasternak was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature (for the seventh time: 1946; 1947; 1948; 1949; 1950; 1957; 1958). In March 1958, a delegation from the Union of Writers of the USSR visited Sweden and learned that the names of Mikhail Sholokhov, Ezra Pound and Alberto Moravia were mentioned among those nominated along with Pasternak. The Secretary of the Board of the Union of Writers of the USSR, Georgy Markov, reported to the Central Committee of the CPSU “that among the highest circles of the Academy there is a certain opinion in favor of Pasternak,” which should be countered by the publication of materials “about Sholokhov’s international popularity, about his wide fame in the Scandinavian countries.”

A telegram from 07.04.1958, sent to the Soviet ambassador to Sweden, stated:

It would be desirable to make it clear to the Swedish public through cultural figures close to us that the Soviet Union would highly appreciate the awarding 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 from other countries.

In 1958, Boris Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

In 1964, the French writer and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre refused the Nobel Prize in Literature. In his statement, in addition to his personal reasons for refusing the prize, he also indicated that the Nobel Prize had become «the highest Western 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 its native country.»

In 1965, Sholokhov was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature (for the eleventh time: 1948; 1949; 1950; 1955; 1956; 1958; 1961; 1962; 1963; 1964; 1965) and received it. The prize was awarded unanimously «for the artistic power and integrity of the epic about the Don Cossacks in a turning point for Russia.» Sholokhov is the only Soviet writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature with the consent of the USSR leadership.

The media have repeatedly said that Mikhail Sholokhov did not bow to Gustav Adolf VI, who presented the prize. According to some sources, this was done intentionally, with the words: «We Cossacks do not bow to anyone. Before the people — please, but before the king I will not and that’s it…». Mikhail Sholokhov denies this legend:

No, there was a bow. There was! I had no reason to break protocol. I had no intention of doing anything like that. <> The King was a head taller than me. You can bow to him… But what about me?

In 2016, the Swedish Academy published a list of 90 nominees for the 1965 award on its website. It turned out that the academicians discussed the idea of ​​dividing the award between Anna Akhmatova and Mikhail Sholokhov.

On February 23, 1967, M. A. Sholokhov was awarded the title Hero of Socialist Labor by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.

Political position
In 1966, he spoke at the 23rd Congress of the CPSU and spoke about the trial of Sinyavsky and Daniel:

If these young men with a black conscience had been caught in the memorable 1920s, when they judged not based on strictly delineated articles of the criminal code, but guided by revolutionary legal consciousness… (stormy applause)… Oh, these werewolves would not have received such a measure of punishment! (stormy applause). And here, you see, they are still discussing the severity of the sentence! I would also like to address the foreign defenders of libelers: do not worry, dear ones, about the safety of criticism in our country. We support and develop criticism, it is also sharply heard at our current congress. But slander is not criticism, but dirt from a puddle is not paint from an artist’s palette!

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

Sholokhov sharply criticized A. Yakovlev’s article «Against Antihistoricism» (1972), the result of which was a closed meeting of the Politburo, which decided to remove Yakovlev from his post in the Central Committee of the CPSU and send him as an ambassador to Canada (1973).

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

In March 1978, M. Sholokhov sent a letter to L. Brezhnev: «The obvious need for active protection of Russian national culture», in which he sharply spoke out against some writers

Not only is the idea of ​​the spiritual degeneration of the nation being propagated, but attempts to create favorable conditions for this are also intensifying. M. Sholokhov, 1978

Last years

On May 23, 1980, the M. A. Sholokhov House-Museum was opened in Kruzhilinskoye, the writer’s birthplace. By the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Mikhail Sholokhov was awarded the Order of Lenin and the second Gold Medal «Hammer and Sickle». He lived in his house in Veshenskaya (now a museum) until the end of his days. He donated the Stalin Prize to the Defense Fund, the Lenin Prize for the novel «Virgin Soil Upturned» to the Karginsky Village Council of the Bazkovsky District of the Rostov Region for the construction of a new school, and the Nobel Prize to build a school in Veshenskaya. He enjoyed hunting and fishing. Since the 1960s, he had effectively retired from literature.

On February 21, 1984, Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov died of laryngeal cancer. The funeral took place on February 23 — the funeral cortege was accompanied by an escort of servicemen of the North Caucasus Military District. The funeral of Mikhail Aleksandrovich took place in the village of Veshenskaya on the banks of the Don, but not in the cemetery, but in the courtyard of the house where the writer lived. In 1986, a monument by sculptor O. K. Komov was erected on the grave. The monument is made of gray granite and has the shape of a polished block. The inscription on the monument reads: «Sholokhov».

Mikhail Aleksandrovich’s wife, Maria Petrovna Sholokhova, died on January 20, 1992 at the age of 91, she was buried next to her husband. A granite monument (author — N. V. Mozhaev) was erected on the grave of M. P. Sholokhova.

Membership in organizations
All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) since 1932 (candidate since 1930), delegate to the 18th-26th Congresses of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)/CPSU;
Central Committee of the CPSU since 1961;
Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the 1st-10th convocations (since 1937);
Full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1939).

Addresses in Moscow

In 1923, having received a referral from the labor exchange for the position of accountant in the housing department No. 803 on Krasnaya Presnya, he moved into a room (8 m²) in Georgievskiy Lane No. 2, apt. 5.
Until 1943, during trips to the capital on literary matters, Mikhail Sholokhov stayed at the National Hotel — he lived for two or three weeks, no more than a month.
since 1944, Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov and his family settled in Moscow, in apartment No. 44 of house No. 19 on Starokonyushenny Lane.
In the 1960s, the writer was allocated an apartment in house No. 33 on Sivtsev Vrazhek. It was here that M. A. Sholokhov came as a delegate to party and writers’ congresses, came to sessions of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, on business.
In 1975, the writer received a new apartment in Moscow — house No. 18, apt. 3 on Zvenigorodskaya Street.

Awards

Stalin Prize, first degree (1941) — for the novel «Quiet Flows the Don» (1928-1940).
Lenin Prize (1960) — for the novel «Virgin Soil Upturned» (1932-1960).
Nobel Prize in Literature (1965) — «for the artistic power and integrity of the epic about the Don Cossacks in a turning point for Russia.»
International Peace Prize in the field of culture of the World Peace Council.
International Literary Prize «Sophia».
International Prize «Lotus» of writers from Asian and African countries.

Awards and titles

Twice Hero of Socialist Labor
02/23/1967
05/23/1980
Six Orders of Lenin
01/31/1939
05/23/1955 — for outstanding achievements in the field of fiction and in connection with the 50th anniversary of his birth
05/22/1965
02/23/1967 — to the title Hero of Socialist Labor
05/22/1975
05/23/1980 — to the title Hero of Socialist Labor
Order of the October Revolution (1972).
Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree (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 of 1941-1945».
Medal «For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945».
Gold Medal named after Alexander Fadeev (1972).
Order «Georgi Dimitrov» (1975) (Bulgaria).
Order «Cyril and Methodius» 1st degree (1975) (Bulgaria).
Order «Star of Friendship of Peoples» 1st degree (German Democratic Republic).
Order of Sukhe-Bator (Mongolia).
Honorary Doctor of Sciences of Rostov State University, Leipzig Karl Marx University, University of St Andrews (Scotland).

Memory

In 1984, in accordance with the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and in order to perpetuate the memory of M. A. Sholokhov, the Veshensky District of the Rostov Region was renamed Sholokhov.
On May 16, 2000, Sholokhov’s name was given to the Moscow State Humanitarian University (MGGU) named after M. A. Sholokhov.
In 2002, Sholokhov’s name was given to the Moscow Presidential Cadet School of the National Guard Troops of the Russian Federation.
In 2003, a documentary film «The Writer and the Leader» was made about Sholokhov (about the relationship between the writer himself and Stalin).
2005 was declared the Year of Sholokhov by UNESCO.
An avenue in the city of Rostov-on-Don and a street in Moscow are named after Sholokhov, as well as streets in the village of Veshenskaya, the cities of Alma-Ata, Aksay, Millerovo, Salsk, Boguchar, Dnepropetrovsk, and Smolensk.
In 2009, a pine forest in memory of M. A. Sholokhov (1.5 hectares) was planted in Uralsk (Kazakhstan).
An asteroid (2448) Sholokhov is named after the writer.
There is a variety of lilac called «Mikhail Sholokhov».
In 2020, the Orenburg branch of the Union of Writers of Russia established the literary Sholokhov Prize «They Fought for the Motherland».
Memorial plaques and monuments have been erected to M. A. Sholokhov:
A granite bust of Sholokhov by sculptor E. A. Sergibaev was unveiled in 2002 in Uralsk (Kazakhstan).
A monument to Sholokhov was erected on Gogolevsky Boulevard. Sculptor A. Rukavishnikov and architect I. Voevodin.
A monument to M. A. Sholokhov on the embankment of Rostov-on-Don. Erected in May 2000 in honor of the 95th anniversary of the writer’s birth. The author of the sculpture is N. V. Mozhaev.
A bust of Mikhail Sholokhov was erected on Pushkinskaya Street in Rostov-on-Don.
A monument to M. Sholokhov with the sculptural composition «The Watchmen» on Volzhsky Boulevard in Moscow.

Monuments have been erected to the heroes of M. A. Sholokhov’s works:
Sculptural composition «Grigory and Aksinya» (Monument to the heroes of «Quiet Flows the Don» on the bank of the Don in the village of Veshenskaya).
Sculptural composition «Grigory and Aksinya in a boat» (Monument to the heroes of «Quiet Flows the Don» on the embankment of Rostov-on-Don).
Monument to the Cossacks of the Quiet Flows the Don on the outskirts of the Kruzhilinsky farm. Sculptors N. V. Mozhaev, E. M. Mozhaeva, N. N. Shcherbakov. Architect V. I. Voloshin.
Memorial museums
M.A. Sholokhov State Museum-Reserve (Rostov Region)
Sholokhov Center Museum in Rostov-on-Don
M.A. Sholokhov Memorial Museum in Western Kazakhstan
M.A. Sholokhov House Museum in Nikolaevsk, Nikolaevsky District (Volgograd Region)

In philately
Postage stamps
USSR stamps, 1985, (CFA [JSC Marka] #5562-5564; Mi #5509-5511)
USSR stamp, 1990, (CFA [JSC Marka] #6258; Mi #6137)
Russian stamp, 2005, (CFA [JSC Marka] #1031; Mi #1263)

The problem of the authorship of M. A. Sholokhov’s texts

The problem of the authorship of texts published under the name of Sholokhov was raised back in the 1920s, when «Quiet Flows the Don» was first published. The main reason for opponents’ doubts about Sholokhov’s authorship (both then and later) was the unusually young age of the author, who created, moreover, 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 localities on the Don, the events of the First World War and the Civil War, which took place when Sholokhov was a child and teenager. To this argument, researchers respond that the novel was written by Sholokhov not at the age of 20, but was written over the course of almost fifteen years. The author spent a lot of time in archives, often communicating with people who later became prototypes of the novel’s heroes. According to some sources, the prototype of Grigory Melekhov was Sholokhov’s father’s colleague Kharlampy Ermakov, one of those who led the Veshenskaya uprising; he spent a lot of time with the future writer, telling him 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», which preceded the novel. In 1929, on the instructions 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 he provided.

Later, the manuscript was lost and was discovered only in 1999. Until 1999, the main argument of Sholokhov’s supporters of his sole authorship was considered to be the draft autograph of a significant part of the text of «Quiet Flows the Don» (more than a thousand pages), discovered in 1987 and stored in the Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Supporters of Sholokhov’s authorship have always claimed 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 Sholokhov’s indisputable texts, on the one hand, and «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 places native to Sholokhov, and many of the book’s heroes have as their prototypes people whom Sholokhov knew personally. In 1999, after many years of searching, the Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences managed to find the manuscripts of the first and second books of «Quiet Flows the Don», which were considered lost. Three examinations were carried out: graphological, textological and identification, which confirmed the authenticity of the manuscript, its belonging to its time and scientifically resolved the problem of the authorship of «Quiet Flows the Don», after which the supporters of Sholokhov’s authorship considered their position to be absolutely proven. In 2006, a facsimile edition of the manuscript was published, giving everyone the opportunity to verify the true authorship of the novel. Nevertheless, a number of supporters of the plagiarism version, based on their own analysis of the texts, remained with their opinion. It boils down to the fact that Sholokhov, in all likelihood, found the manuscript of an unknown White Cossack and reworked 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 refuted by the conducted examinations: the «rewritten» and the author’s texts are fundamentally different (in the author’s text, work on the manuscript, on artistic images is visible; the «rewritten» text or even «translated» largely loses any signs of the author’s work, it is noticeable, often visually, obvious schematism and continuity of presentation, the absence of author’s edits, and on the other hand — semantic and artistic unevenness, the heterogeneity of individual parts of the text). Based on the examination, therefore, it can be said with sufficient confidence that the text of «Quiet Flows the Don» is original, artistically integral and has acquired independent value, and has not become a compilation of fragments and images from another work. The author of «Quiet Flows the Don» is M. A. Sholokhov.

A film adaptation of Sholokhov’s works

«Quiet Flows the Don» (1930) — directed by Olga Preobrazhenskaya, Ivan Pravov.
«Quiet Flows the Don» (1958) — based on the novel of the same name. Director and screenwriter — Sergei Gerasimov.
«Quiet Flows the Don» (1992, released in 2006) — directed by Sergei Bondarchuk.
«Quiet Flows the Don» (2015) — TV series, directed by Sergei Ursulyak.
The Fate of a Man (Mosfilm, 1959) — based on the story of the same name. Screenwriter — Lukin, Yuri Borisovich, directed by Sergei Bondarchuk.
Virgin Soil Upturned (1939) — based on the novel of the same name.
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 cycle «Don Tales». Director — Evgeny Morgunov.
Don Tale (1964) — based on stories «Shibalkovo Seed» and «Birthmark». Director — Vladimir Fetin.
In the Azure Steppe (film almanac in 3 parts) — based on early stories.
Whirlwind (1970) (part 1)
Wormhole (1970) (part 2)
Food Commissar (Mosfilm, 1970) (part 3)
«Foal» (1959) — short film based on story by M.A. Sholokhov, directed by Vladimir Fetin.
Uninvited Love (1964) — based on story «Alien Blood», directed by Vladimir Monakhov.
«They Fought for the Motherland» (1975) — based on the novel of the same name — directed by Sergei Bondarchuk.
Born Free (2005) — a TV film based on the story «The Foal» by M.A. Sholokhov, directed by Elena Lenskaya.
Food Commissar (2018) — a short film based on the story «Food Commissar» by M.A. Sholokhov, directed by Maxim Baralyuk.