Mikhail Sholokhov, everyone opens it in their own way. Everyone likes their hero of Sholokhov's stories. This is understandable. After all, the fate of the heroes, the problems raised by Sholokhov, are in tune with our time.
But my Sholokhov is not only the author of works. First of all, he is a man of interesting, bright destiny. Judge for yourself: at the age of sixteen, young Sholokhov miraculously survived, falling into the hands of the power-hungry Nestor Makhno, and at thirty-seven he rescued his friends from persecution and repression more than once. He was accused of plagiarism, sympathy for the white movement, they tried to poison him, kill him. Yes, many trials fell to the lot of this writer. But he did not become like grass, which "grows, obediently bending under the disastrous breath of worldly storms." Despite everything, Sholokhov remained a straightforward, honest, truthful person. One of the manifestations of his veracity was the collection of stories "Don stories".
In them, Sholokhov expressed his attitude to the war, which was the tragedy of the people. It is disastrous for both sides, brings irreparable losses, cripples souls. The writer is right: it is unacceptable when people, rational beings, come to barbarism and self-destruction.
In Don Stories, I was attracted by the realistic, anti-romantic presentation of harsh military conditions; that truth of war that spares no one, not even children. There are no unnecessary romantic beauties in his stories. Sholokhov said that it is impossible to write too picturesquely, colorfully about death among the "gray-haired feather grasses", to ascribe to the perishing states when they "died choking beautiful words". But what about the beauty of presentation? Sholokhov, which is remarkable, has beauty in the prostate, the nationality of the language.
The very essence of the stories makes you think about life, about modern life. In my opinion, the meaning of the stories is that people, in order to prove their devotion to their ideals, step over the life and fate of their closest, closest people. Brother must kill brother, son must kill father.
Class hatred is higher than kindred feelings. In the short story “Bakhchevik”, a Cossack saves a wounded brother, deals with his White Guard father. The story “Family Man” is even darker: in it, the father kills two sons of the Red Guards at once, trembling before the threats of the White Cossacks.
In this sense, the stories are quite modern, the only thing is that ideological hatred is replaced by money. For the sake of money in our time, they can "kill both their father and sell their mother."
Sholokhov's heroes do not reason, but act: without hesitation, at the first call of their hearts, they rush into the river to save a foal, save children from gangs. But along with good deeds, also, without hesitation, they kill their sons, take away the last from the peasants. They make you angry, then cry. You read, and "sadness-longing" fills your heart. Why couldn't Sholokhov add a little "smile" and happiness to his works? It seems to me that he wanted to bring us, the readers, at least a little closer to the reality of war, when there is not a single happy person.
What gives me Sholokhov? Let one critic speak for me: “He awakens the fire hidden in our souls, introducing us to the great kindness, great mercy and great humanity of the Russian people. He is one of those writers whose art helps everyone become more human." Such is my Sholokhov. A writer who taught me lessons in courage, decency and honesty. I will try to read and re-read Sholokhov, each time marveling at his ability to look into deep recesses human soul. I trust my writer, so I will never have doubts about his veracity. Let the author be accused of having stopped writing in last years. What was he to write about? About the victories of developed socialism? He saw perfectly what was happening. Yes, the writer worked on the novel "They Fought for the Motherland."
Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov is the first figure in our post-October literature.
If the enemy attacks our country, we writers, at the call of the party and the government, will lay down our pen and take up another weapon, so that from the volley of the rifle corps, which Comrade Voroshilov spoke of, it would fly and smash the enemy and our lead, heavy and hot, like ...
The fate of the heroes, the problems raised by Sholokhov, are in tune with our time. But my Sholokhov is not only the author of works. First of all, he is a man of interesting, bright destiny. Judge for yourself: at the age of sixteen, young Sholokhov miraculously survived, falling into the hands of ...
Mikhail Sholokhov. Everyone opens it in their own way. One is close to Grigory Melekhov, the daring Cossack from the novel " Quiet Don”, another fell in love with grandfather Shchukar, a funny old man from the book “Virgin Soil Upturned”. This is understandable. After all, the fate of the heroes, the problems raised by Sholokhov, ...
At the end of 56g. M. A. Sholokhov published his story The Fate of Man. This is a story about a simple man in a big war, who, at the cost of losing loved ones, comrades, with his courage, heroism, gave the right to life and freedom to his homeland. Andrey Sokolov is a modest worker...
The writer also tells that the poor Cossacks with their whole families went over to the side of the Russian authorities, they were it: a support in the Cossack farm, “Through the farm,” writes Sholokhov in the story “The Mortal Enemy,” as if someone furrowed the side. The hero of the story "The Mortal Enemy", the Cossack Efim Ozerov, fought for the red Tsaritsyn. He is also waging an uncompromising struggle with the kulaks, representing the Soviet government on the farm. Fists brutally kill Ozerov, but his cause is invincible. “Remember, Yefim,” he recalls before his death, the words of his friend, “they will kill you - there will be twenty new Yefimovs.” In the story "The Shepherd" Sholokhov already draws representatives of the younger generation, the children of the poor - Grigory and Dunyatka. They go to replace Yefim, just like him, they expose the kulaks.
Difficult to develop new life, perished the best people in the fight against the inert forces of the village, who did not want to give up their property. Sholokhov shows how difficult and difficult it was for the Cossacks to join a new life, how slowly a turning point occurred in the minds of people who were in captivity of class and regional isolation. The formation of a new consciousness, new relationships between people is shown in the story "Alien Blood" on the example of grandfather Gavrila. The difficulty of the formation of a new consciousness in the Cossack environment during the years of breaking the old world is revealed in the story "Crooked Stitch".
The sharpness of the class struggle on the Don, complicated by class prejudices, the intensity of the clash between the new and the old are conveyed in stories simultaneously with the affirmation of the high humanism of the revolutionary struggle. Sholokhov reveals the deep humanity, truly high and noble qualities of his heroes fighting for Soviet power (“Food Commissar”, “Shibalkovo seed”).
The humanistic essence of the revolutionary struggle, the charm, kindness, sensitivity of the Cossacks who fought for Soviet power, Sholokhov contrasts with the furious, bestial malice of the enemies. The reactionary part of the Cossacks - the White Guards, Cossack officers, kulaks, belbbandits - defending proprietary interests, estate privileges, show predatory cruelty, bestial savagery and ignorance. The images of Colonel Chernoyarov and Yesaul Kramskov (“Kolovert”), Pan Tomilin (“Azure Steppe”), bandit Fomin (“Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic”), kulak Ignat (“Mortal Enemy”), Commandant Anisim (“Bakhchevnik”) embody those class forces against which the heroes of Sholokhov's stories rise up and fight, the people of the new world - communists and Komsomol members.
The fierce class struggle on the Don during the years of the Civil War, the growth of the consciousness of the working Cossacks on the way to a new life, the birth of new human relations in the revolutionary struggle - all these questions were posed by Sholokhov in his stories and were fully resolved by a mature artist in "Quiet Don" and "Virgin Soil Upturned".
Don stories played a big role in creative development Sholokhov. They were approaches to his epic works, a school where the artistic skills of the author of The Quiet Flows the Don and Virgin Soil Upturned were honed. The writer himself too severely assessed his early work, for many years did not reprint the stories, believing that "there is a lot of naive and childishly helpless in them."
The young Sholokhov really abused naturalistic, deliberately refined descriptions, simply schematically revealed individual characters, obscured them with dramatic situations. However, already in the early stories, the ability to select an essential detail, to penetrate into a complex inner world heroes, reveal characters in action, deeds. Major revolutionary events intrude into life, affect the minds and behavior of people, and the aspiring writer seeks to psychologically motivate these processes.
Young Dunyatka from the story "The Shepherd", not yet realizing the complexity of breaking life, joyfully perceives the world, she is amused by the fact that brother Gregory has nevertheless become a shepherd, that he is next to her: “Her tanned, freckled cheeks, eyes, lips are laughing, she is all laughing, because only the seventeenth spring went to her on Krasnaya Gorka, but at seventeen everything seems so funny: the frowning face of the brother, and the lop-eared calves, chewing weeds on the go, and it’s even funny that the second day they don’t have a piece of bread. But the orphaned Dunyatka had to learn grief early: her brother, the closest person to her, died in the fight against the fists. Dunyatka is completely alone in the deserted steppe. “When her heart swells with bitterness, when tears burn out her eyes, then somewhere, far from other people’s eyes, she takes out an unwashed linen shirt from her bag ... She leans her face against her and smells her native sweat. And lies still for a long time...
The miles go back. From the steppe gullies, a wolf howl, indignant at life, and Dunyatka walks by the side of the road, goes to the city, where Soviet power is, where the proletarians study in order to be able to manage the republic in the future.
Sholokhov's stories are always based on a very specific, usually real case from the civil war and the first years of Russian power. The author most often relies on facts he has seen and experienced. The sharpness of the contradictions, the dramatic nature of the class struggle on the Don determines the vitality and sharpness of the plot situations themselves. The growth of social contradictions leads to an inevitable clash, demarcates even people who are close to each other. This conflict also determines the composition of most of the stories - the opposition of the fighting camps, the clash of people who are different in their social aspirations and human principles, often ending tragically. But the writer always permeates the narrative with affirming optimism, heartfelt lyrics. Landscape descriptions are already associated with the disclosure of the psychology of the characters, they take an active part in the events depicted. Having drawn the tense atmosphere of the battle in the story “Kolovert”, Sholokhov concludes: “And above the earth, languishing from the spring rains, from the sun, from the winds of the steppe, smelling of cheborets and wormwood, a haze of smoky, streaming floated the sweet smell of earthen rust, the ticklish scent of last year’s herbs, at the root of the rooted.
The chipped blue edge of the forest trembled above the horizon, and from above, through the golden dust blanket spread over the steppe, the lark echoed the machine guns with beaded shot.
But sometimes such landscapes slipped through that did not actively participate in the narrative, did not help the development of the action, the characterization of characters and events. They were painted with deliberate sophistication: “The fog, crouching low, curled over the mowed grass, pawed the thorny stems with plump gray tentacles, wrapped the steam-smoking mop like a woman. Behind the three poplars, where the sun had set for the night, the sky was blooming with wild roses, and the steep, rearing clouds looked like withered petals, etc.
The narration in the stories is often conducted in the first person - on behalf of the grandfather Zakhar ("Azure Steppe"), the ferryman Mikishara ("Family Man"), the machine gunner Shibalyuk ("Shibalkovo Seed"). The hero of the story "Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic" Bogatyrev tells in detail about how he organized a republic in the countryside; Fedot ("About Kolchak, nettles and other things") tells the story of his dog nickname - "Kolchak" and "nettle insult". In the form of a fairy tale, the young writer was not interested in self-sufficient stylization - he sought to master the features of a living folk, colloquial language, to convey its richness and colorfulness.
"Figurative, colorful" stories, noted by Serafimovich, Sholokhov's inherent "manner of writing" distinguished his books from the books of other writers. The individual characteristic of Sholokhov's speech can be easily found in the peculiar vocabulary, and in well-aimed word combinations, and in epithets, and in the construction of the speech of the author and characters. Sholokhov compares the Cossack's beard with a "new millet broom", the handle of the Big Dipper bucket with an oblique "protruding drawbar" of a cart. According to the principle of comparison with objects or phenomena of peasant everyday life, many images are built (“joy bloomed like a wild thistle”; a bullet “furrowed the darkness”; “lightning slid like a lizard”; Mishka’s hair “were like the petals of a blooming sunflower”, etc.).
Today is the birthday of Mikhail Sholokhov (1905–1984). On the portal Presidential Library you can find rare materials that reveal outstanding personality writer, the depth and scale of the problems raised by him. The electronic fund of the library contains lifetime editions of the writer's works, literary studies and his photographic portraits.
The electronic copy of the book by Isaiah Lezhnev "Mikhail Sholokhov", published in 1941, deserves special attention. It reveals the history of the creation of the novel "Quiet Flows the Don", which became the largest domestic literary event of the twentieth century. “Sholokhov decided to write a history of the Cossacks of our era, art encyclopedia the former Cossack estate, ”Lezhnev writes.
The very reality of the 1920s, in relation to which Mikhail was by no means an outside observer, led the young Cossack to this idea. A fighter of the red cavalry, chopping white Cossacks with a saber on the move, he, like him main character Grigory Melekhov, every time he asked himself “damned questions”: who needs it for a brother to go against his brother? ..
Sholokhov was born in 1905 in the farm Kruzhilin of the Vyoshenskaya village former Region Don troops. When the boy grew up, his father took him to the city to study, and his mother, yearning for her son, learned to read and write herself in order to be able to correspond with him. It is likely that her son's growing talent, which she intuitively saw in every line of his letters, pushed her to this.
The future writer studied until 1918, until the Russian lands shuddered from the fratricidal war. And this war covered the Don Cossack villages in the most merciless way.
In a short autobiography, Mikhail Sholokhov writes: “Since 1920, I served and roamed the Don land. The gangs were chasing us. I also chased the gangs that ruled the Don until 1922. I had to be in different bindings ... The first book was published in 1925. Since 1926 I have been writing “Quiet Flows the Don”…”.
Outcome creative work Sholokhov of that period - six large books: four volumes of "The Quiet Don", the first volume of "Virgin Soil Upturned" and his first work - a collection of "Don Stories".
In the literary environment, according to Lezhnev, Sholokhov was met unfriendly. The critics of the RAPP era were as merciless as they were mediocre. They wrote, say, about the fact that Sholokhov was obsessed with the "ideology of the vacillating middle peasant." Such an accusation in those years could break anyone, but not Sholokhov, whose truth was the truth of his village, his whole being. Luckily, the old one was still alive. proletarian writer Alexander Serafimovich, who highly appreciated the first book of the Don stanitsa - "Don Stories". The critic noted the special juiciness of Sholokhov's language, the great knowledge of the described reality. And also - a sense of artistic proportion, keen eye: “Like a steppe flower,” Lezhnev Serafimovich quoted, “the stories of Comrade Sholokhov stand as a living spot. It’s simple, bright, and you feel what is being told - it’s standing before your eyes.
When the young writer in 1927 sent the first volume of The Quiet Flows the Don to the editorial office of the magazine Oktyabr, they reacted rather reservedly to the manuscript. But since the novel dealt with the Cossacks, and Serafimovich was in the honorary editors of the magazine, former native from a Cossack family, then, to be sure, the manuscript was handed over to him for final conclusion. All 20 author's sheets.
“It was not easy for the old writer to read it! - Lezhnev writes in his book. - Inexperienced in editorial procedures, Sholokhov presented the manuscript, rewritten on a typewriter - completely without intervals! .. Serafimovich read it and saw that it was an artistic masterpiece. And then, in 1928, the printing of The Quiet Flows the Don began with the January issue of the magazine.
A great literary event was sudden appearance the first two books of such an outstanding work. This gave rise to some fellow writers to doubt: a work of such magnitude and power could not, in their opinion, be written by a 23-year-old boy from a remote Don village with four classes of gymnasium education. A separate group of scientists and publicists has been and is still engaged in disputes about the authorship of The Quiet Flows the Don, which often go beyond the scope of philological science.
“...Some orthodox “leaders” of the RAAPA accused me of that,” Sholokhov complained in a letter to Maxim Gorky, “that I allegedly justify the uprising by citing the facts of the infringement of the Cossacks of the upper Don. Is it so? Without exaggerating colors, I painted the harsh reality that preceded the uprising ... I got sick for these one and a half years for my work and I will be extremely glad for your every word.
A new shock for the writer was the story of the publication in 1969 of fresh chapters from the novel "They Fought for the Motherland". The truth told in them about the repressions of 1937 did not suit the then authorities. And yet, after the meeting with Leonid Brezhnev, the chapters were published in Pravda, the main newspaper of the country.
Sholokhov's need for truth, no matter how difficult it may be, the desire to display it in all real contradictions was noted by everyone who had the good fortune to communicate with the writer. It was a lot of work and great happiness to extract grains of this truth on a white sheet of paper. But after all, the response was what: “Sholokhov, judging by the first volume, is talented,” Maxim Gorky wrote after his first acquaintance with The Quiet Don. - This is joy. Russia is very anathematically talented.”
From the works of Mikhail Sholokhov
The past is like that distant steppe in a haze.
It doesn’t happen that you can save yourself in the cold all your life.
If there is no meaning in death, then there was no meaning in life either.
You have become thin, as if sickness wears you down. You don't eat bread, but he eats you.
And what did he, darlings, find good in her? Even if there was a woman, otherwise. No ass, no belly, one fear. We have girls smoother than her walking.
The writer must be able to directly tell the reader the truth, no matter how bitter it may be.
| Memorial plaque in Moscow | ||
| Tombstone (view 1) | ||
| Monument in Rostov-on-Don | ||
| Monument in Moscow (on Gogol Boulevard) | ||
| Bronze bust at home (view 1) | ||
| Monument in Moscow (on Volzhsky Boulevard) | ||
| Monument in Boguchar | ||
| Memorial sign in Boguchar | ||
| Memorial plaque in Boguchar (on the building of the gymnasium) | ||
| Memorial plaque in Boguchar (on the house where the writer lived) | ||
| Bronze bust at home (view 2) | ||
| Memorial estate in Vyoshenskaya | ||
| Tombstone (view 2) |
W Olokhov Mikhail Alexandrovich - a great Russian writer, the largest Russian prose writer, a classic of Russian Soviet literature, an academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences, a reserve colonel.
Born on May 11 (24), 1905 on the farm Kruzhilin of the village of the Vyoshenskaya region of the Don Cossacks (now the Sholokhov district of the Rostov region). The illegitimate son of a Ukrainian woman, the wife of the Don Cossack A.D. Kuznetsova (1871-1942) and a wealthy clerk (the son of a merchant, a native of the Ryazan region) A.M. Sholokhov (1865-1925). AT early childhood bore the surname Kuznetsov, received an allotment of land as a "son of a Cossack." In 1913, after being adopted by his own father, he lost his Cossack privileges, becoming the "son of a tradesman." He grew up in an atmosphere of obvious ambiguity, which, obviously, gave rise to a craving for truth and justice in Sholokhov's character, but at the same time the habit of hiding everything about himself as much as possible.
From 1915 to March 1918 he studied at the Bogucharsky men's classical gymnasium. He lived on 2nd Meshchanskaya Street (now Prokopenko Street) in the house of the priest D.I.Tishansky. He graduated from incomplete three classes of the gymnasium, the Civil War prevented (in official sources - he completed four classes). During the Civil War, the Sholokhov family could be under attack from two sides: for the White Cossacks, they were "non-residents", for the Reds - "exploiters". Young Sholokhov did not have a passion for hoarding (like his hero, the son of a wealthy Cossack Makar Nagulnov) and took the side of the victorious force that established at least relative peace, served in the food detachment, but arbitrarily reduced the taxation of people of his circle; was sentenced (probation for 1 year).
His elder friend and mentor, a member of the RSDLP (b) since 1903, E.G. Levitskaya (Sholokhov himself joined the party in 1932), to whom the story "The Fate of a Man" was subsequently dedicated, believed that in Grigory Melekhov's "reelings" in "Quiet Don" is a lot of autobiographical. Sholokhov changed many professions, especially in Moscow, where he lived for a long time from the end of 1922 to 1926. Then, after gaining a foothold in literature, he settled in his homeland in the village of Veshenskaya.
In 1923, Sholokhov published feuilletons, from the end of 1923 - stories in which he immediately switched from feuilleton comedy to sharp drama, reaching tragedy. At the same time, the stories were not devoid of elements of melodrama. Most of these works were collected in the collections Don Stories (1925) and Azure Steppe (1926, supplemented by the previous collection). With the exception of the story “Alien Blood” (1926), where the old man Gavrila and his wife, who have lost their son, a white Cossack, nurse a communist food orderer and begin to love him like a son, and he leaves them, in Sholokhov’s early works, the heroes are mostly sharply They are divided into positive (Red fighters, Soviet activists) and negative, sometimes pure villains (whites, "bandits", kulaks and kulaks). Many characters have real prototypes, but Sholokhov sharpens almost everything, exaggerates: death, blood, torture, the pangs of hunger are deliberately naturalistic. The favorite plot of the young writer, starting with "The Mole" (1923), is a deadly clash between the closest relatives: father and son, siblings.
Sholokhov still clumsily confirms his loyalty to the communist idea, emphasizing the priority of social choice in relation to any other human relations including family. In 1931, he republished Don Stories, adding new ones, which emphasized the comic in the behavior of the characters (later, in Virgin Soil Upturned, he combined comedy with drama, sometimes quite effectively). Then, for almost a quarter of a century, the stories were not reprinted, the author put them very low and returned them to the reader when, for lack of a new one, they had to remember the forgotten old.
In 1925, Sholokhov began a work about the Cossacks in 1917, during the Kornilov revolt, called Quiet Don (and not Donshchina, according to legend). However, this plan was abandoned, but a year later the writer again takes up the "Quiet Flows the Don", widely unfolding the picture of the pre-war life of the Cossacks and the events of the First World War. The first two books of the epic novel were published in 1928 in the October magazine. Almost immediately there are doubts about their authorship, too much knowledge and experience required a work of this magnitude. Sholokhov brought the manuscripts to Moscow for examination (in the 1990s, the Moscow journalist L.E. Kolodny gave a description of them, although not strictly scientific, and comments on them). The young writer was full of energy, had a phenomenal memory, read a lot (in the 1920s even the memoirs of white generals were available), asked the Cossacks in the Don farms about the "German" and civil wars, and he knew the life and customs of his native Don like no one else.
The events of collectivization (and those preceding it) delayed work on the epic novel. In letters, including to I.V. Stalin, Sholokhov tried to open his eyes to the true state of things: the complete collapse of the economy, lawlessness, torture applied to collective farmers. However, he accepted the very idea of collectivization and, in a softened form, with undeniable sympathy for the main communist characters, showed on the example of the Gremyachiy Log farm in the first book of the novel Virgin Soil Upturned (1932). Even a very smoothed image of dispossession (“right-wing deviationist” Razmetny) was very suspicious for the authorities and semi-official writers, in particular, the magazine “ New world"Rejected the author's title of the novel" With Blood and Sweat ". But in many ways, the work suited I.V. Stalin. The high artistic level of the book, as it were, proved the fruitfulness of communist ideas for art, and courage within the limits of what was permitted created the illusion of freedom of creativity in the USSR. "Virgin Soil Upturned" was declared the perfect example of literature socialist realism and soon entered into all school programs, becoming a must-read work.
This directly or indirectly helped Sholokhov to continue work on The Quiet Don, the release of the third book (sixth part) of which was delayed due to a rather sympathetic portrayal of the participants in the anti-Bolshevik Upper Don uprising of 1919. Sholokhov turned to M. Gorky and with his help obtained from I.V. Stalin permission to publish this book without cuts (1932), and in 1934 he basically completed the fourth, last, but began to rewrite it again, probably not without toughening ideological pressure. In the last two books of The Quiet Flows the Don (the seventh part of the fourth book was published in 1937-1938, the eighth in 1940), a lot of journalistic, often didactic, unambiguously pro-Bolshevik declarations appeared, quite often contradicting the plot and figurative structure of the epic novel . But this does not add arguments to the theory of "two authors" or "author" and "co-author", developed by skeptics who irrevocably do not believe in the authorship of Sholokhov (A.I. Solzhenitsyn, I.B. Tomashevskaya among them). Apparently, Sholokhov himself was his "co-author", keeping mainly art world, created by him in the early 1930s, and fastening an ideological orientation in a purely external way.
In 1935, E.G. Levitskaya admired Sholokhov, finding that he had turned "from a 'doubter', staggering into a solid communist, who knew where he was going, clearly seeing both the goal and the means to achieve it." Undoubtedly, the writer convinced himself of this and, although in 1938 he almost fell victim to a false political accusation, he found the courage to end The Quiet Flows the Don with the complete collapse of his beloved hero Grigory Melekhov, crushed by the wheel of cruel history.
There are more than 600 characters in the epic novel, and most of them perish or die from grief, deprivation, absurdities and the disorder of life. The civil war, although at first it seems “toy” to “German” veterans, takes the lives of almost all the heroes who are remembered and loved by the reader, and the bright life, for which it was supposedly worth making such sacrifices, never comes.
Both fighting parties are to blame for what is happening, inciting bitterness in each other. Among the Reds, Sholokhov does not have such born executioners as Mitka Korshunov, the Bolshevik Bunchuk is engaged in executions out of a sense of duty and falls ill at such a “work”, but it was Bunchuk who first killed his comrade-in-arms, captain Kalmykov, the Reds were the first to chop up the prisoners, shot the arrested farmers, and Mikhail Koshevoy is pursuing his former friend Gregory, although he even forgave him the murder of his brother Peter. Not only the agitation of Shtokman and other Bolsheviks is to blame, misfortunes cover people like an avalanche sweeping away everything in its path as a result of their own bitterness, because of mutual misunderstanding, injustice and insults.
The epic content in The Quiet Flows the Don has not supplanted the novel, the personal. Sholokhov as no one managed to show the complexity common man(Intellectuals, on the other hand, do not arouse sympathy in him, in The Quiet Don they are mostly in the background and speak invariably in a bookish language even with the Cossacks who do not understand them). passionate love Grigory and Aksinya, Natalya's true love, Daria's debauchery, the absurd mistakes of the aging Pantelei Prokofich, the mother's mortal longing for her son who did not return from the war (Ilyinichna according to Grigory) and other tragic life interweaving make up the richest gamut of characters and situations. The life and nature of the Don are meticulously and, of course, lovingly depicted. The author conveys the sensations experienced by all human senses. The intellectual limitations of many heroes are compensated by the depth and sharpness of their experiences.
In 1939, Sholokhov was elected a full member (academician) of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
In The Quiet Flows the Don, the writer's talent spilled over into full force - and almost exhausted. Probably, this was facilitated not only by the social situation, but also by the writer's ever-increasing addiction to alcohol. The story "The Science of Hate" (1942), which agitated for hatred of the Nazis, turned out to be below the average of the "Don Stories" in terms of artistic quality. Somewhat higher was the level of the chapters published in 1943-1944 from the novel “They Fought for the Motherland”, conceived as a trilogy, but never finished (in the 1960s, Sholokhov attributed the “pre-war” chapters with talk about I.V. Stalin and repressions 1937, in the spirit of the already ended "thaw", they were printed with cuts, which completely deprived the writer of creative inspiration). The work consists mainly of soldiers' conversations and tales, oversaturated with jokes. In general, Sholokhov's failure in comparison not only with the first, but also with the second novel is obvious.
By a decree of the Council of People's Commissars of March 15, 1941, Sholokhov was awarded the Stalin (State) Prize of the 1st degree for the novel "Quiet Don".
After the war, Sholokhov, a publicist, paid a generous tribute to the official state ideology, but he noted the “thaw” with a work of rather high dignity - the story “The Fate of a Man” (1956). Ordinary person, a typical Sholokhov hero, appeared in a genuine and not realized by him moral greatness. Such a plot could not have appeared in the “first post-war spring”, which coincided with the meeting between the author and Andrei Sokolov: the hero was in captivity, he drank vodka without snacks so as not to humiliate himself in front of German officers - this, like the humanistic spirit of the story itself, was by no means not in line with the official literature nurtured by Stalinism. "The Fate of Man" turned out to be at the origins of a new concept of personality, more broadly - a new major stage in the development of literature.
The second book of "Virgin Soil Upturned", completed by publication in 1960, remained basically only a sign of a transitional period, when humanism stuck out in every possible way, but thereby the wishful thinking was presented as real. "Warming" images of Davydov (sudden love for "Varyukha-goryukha"), Nagulnov (listening to cock singing, secret love for Lushka), Razmetnov (shooting cats in the name of saving pigeons - popular at the turn of the 1950s-1960s "birds of the world" ) was emphasized "modern" and did not fit with the harsh realities of 1930, which formally remained the basis of the plot. In April 1960, Sholokhov was awarded the Lenin Prize for his novel Virgin Soil Upturned.
In October 1965, Mikhail Sholokhov was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for the artistic power and integrity of the epic about the Don Cossacks at a turning point for Russia."
On December 10, 1965, in Stockholm, the King of Sweden presented Sholokhov with a diploma and gold medal Nobel Prize winner, as well as a check for a sum of money. In his speech during the awards ceremony, the writer said that his goal was "to exalt a nation of workers, builders and heroes." Sholokhov is the only one Soviet writer, who received Nobel Prize with the consent of the USSR authorities.
In 1966, he spoke at the 23rd Congress of the CPSU and spoke about the case of A.D. Sinyavsky and Yu.M. Daniel: when they judged, not relying on the strictly delimited articles of the Criminal Code, but “guided by revolutionary legal consciousness”, oh, these werewolves would have received the wrong measure of punishment! This statement made the figure of Sholokhov odious for a significant part of the intelligentsia in the USSR and in the West.
The writer L.K. Chukovskaya, in her letter to Sholokhov, predicted creative sterility after his speech at the XXIII Congress of the CPSU (1966) with defamation of A.D. Sinyavsky and Yu.M. Daniel. The prediction came true completely.
At Kazom of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of February 23, 1967 for outstanding services in the development of Soviet culture, the creation works of art socialist realism, which have received nationwide recognition and are actively contributing to the communist education of the working people, for fruitful social activities Sholokhov Mikhail Alexandrovich He was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor with the Order of Lenin and the Hammer and Sickle gold medal.
Written by Sholokhov in his best time is a high classic of the literature of the 20th century, with all the shortcomings that marked even his most outstanding works. One of the most essential features of Sholokhov's talent is his ability to see in life and reproduce in art all the richness of human emotions - from tragic hopelessness to cheerful laughter.
The contribution of Sholokhov, one of the leading masters of the literature of socialist realism, to world art is determined primarily by the fact that in his novels, for the first time in the history of world literature, the working people appear in all the richness of types and characters, in such a fullness of social, moral, emotional life that puts them among the undying images of world literature. In his novels, the poetic heritage of the Russian people was combined with the achievements of the realistic novel XIX and XX centuries, they discovered new, previously unknown connections between the spiritual and the material, between man and the outside world. In Sholokhov's epic, man, society, nature act as manifestations of the ever-creating stream of life; their unity and interdependence determine the originality of Sholokhov's poetic world. The writer's works have been translated into almost all languages of the peoples of the USSR, as well as foreign languages.
At By order of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on May 23, 1980, for outstanding services in the development of Soviet literature and in connection with his seventy-fifth birthday, he was awarded the Order of Lenin and the second gold medal "Hammer and Sickle".
Member of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks / CPSU since 1932, member of the Central Committee of the CPSU since 1961, deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the 1st-9th convocations.
Until the end of his life he lived in his house in the village of Veshenskaya, Rostov Region. He died on February 21, 1984 from throat cancer caused by smoking. He was buried in the courtyard of the house where he lived.
Colonel (1943). Awarded 6 orders of Lenin (01/31/1939, 05/23/1955, 05/22/1965, 02/23/1967, 05/22/1975, 05/23/1980), orders October revolution (02.07.1971), Patriotic War 1st degree (09/23/1945), medals, as well as orders and medals of foreign states, including the Order of the GDR "Big Gold Star of Friendship of Peoples" (1964), the Bulgarian orders of Georgy Dimitrov (1975) and Cyril and Methodius 1st degrees (1973).
Laureate of the Lenin Prize (1960), Stalin Prize of the 1st degree (1941), Nobel Prize in Literature (1965), International literary prize"Sofia" (1975), the International Peace Prize in the field of culture of the World Peace Council (1975), the International Prize "Lotus" of the Association of Asian and African Writers (1978).
Honorary citizen of the city of Boguchar, Voronezh region (1979).
A bronze bust of M.A. Sholokhov was installed in the village of Vyoshenskaya, Rostov Region; monuments - in Moscow on the Volzhsky and Gogol boulevards, Rostov-on-Don, Millerovo, Rostov region, Boguchar, Voronezh region; a symbolic memorial on the territory of a boarding school (former male gymnasium) in the city of Boguchar, Voronezh region; memorial plaques - in the city of Boguchar, Voronezh region, on the building in which he studied and on the house in which he lived during his studies, as well as in Moscow, on the house in which he lived during his visits to the capital. Streets in many cities are named after him.
Sholokhov Mikhail Alexandrovich Born May 24, 1905 in x. Kruzhilin, art. Vyoshenskaya, Rostov region
Father - a tradesman before the revolution, after, that is, under the Soviet regime, a food worker. He died in 1925. Mother was killed in 1942 during the bombing of Art. Vyoshenskaya by German aircraft. Studied at the beginning school, then in the men's gymnasium. He graduated from the 4th grade in 1918. Since 1923 he has been a writer. He joined the party in 1930, party card number 0981052. He was accepted as a member of the CPSU (b) by the Vyoshenskaya party organization. He was not subjected to party penalties, was not a member of the Trotskyist or other counter-revolutionary organizations, and had no deviations from the party line. He was drafted into the army in July 1941 with the rank of regimental commissar. Served as a specialist military correspondent. Demobilized in December 1945. Awarded with the Order Fatherland war of the 1st class, medals. Was not in captivity.
Vedomosti of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR Heroes of Socialist Labor: biobibliogr. words. T.1. - Moscow, 2007.
Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov is one of the most famous Russians of the period. His work covers the most important events for our country - the revolution of 1917, the Civil War, the formation of a new government and the Great Patriotic War. In this article we will talk a little about the life of this writer and try to consider his works.
Short biography. Childhood and youth
During the Civil War, he was with the Reds and rose to the rank of commander. Then, after graduation, he moved to Moscow. Here he received his first education. After moving to Boguchar, he entered the gymnasium. Upon graduation, he returned to the capital again, wanted to get a higher education, but could not enter. To support himself, he had to get a job. During this short period, he changed several specialties, continuing to engage in self-education and literature.
The first work of the writer was published in 1923. Sholokhov begins to cooperate with newspapers and magazines, writes feuilletons for them. In 1924, the story "The Mole" was published in "The Young Leninist", the first of the Don cycle.
True fame and the last years of life
The list of works by M. A. Sholokhov should begin with The Quiet Flows the Don. It was this epic that brought the author real fame. Gradually, it became popular not only in the USSR, but also in other countries. The second great work of the writer was "Virgin Soil Upturned", awarded the Lenin Prize.
During the Great Patriotic War, Sholokhov was at this time he wrote many stories dedicated to this terrible time.
In 1965, the year became significant for the writer - he was awarded the Nobel Prize for the novel Quiet Flows the Don. Starting from the 60s, Sholokhov practically stopped writing, dedicating free time fishing and hunting. He gave most of his income to charity and led a quiet life.
The writer died on February 21, 1984. The body was buried on the banks of the Don in the courtyard of his own house.
The life that Sholokhov lived is full of unusual and bizarre events. We will present a list of the writer's works below, and now let's talk a little more about the fate of the author:
- Sholokhov was the only writer who received the Nobel Prize with the approval of the authorities. The author was also called "Stalin's favorite".
- When Sholokhov decided to woo one of the daughters of Gromoslavsky, the former Cossack chieftain, he offered to marry the eldest of the girls, Marya. The writer, of course, agreed. The couple lived in marriage for almost 60 years. During this time, they had four children.
- After the release of The Quiet Flows the Don, critics had doubts that the author of such a large and complex novel was really such a young author. By order of Stalin himself, a commission was established, which conducted a study of the text and issued a conclusion: the epic was indeed written by Sholokhov.
Features of creativity
The works of Sholokhov are inextricably linked with the image of the Don and the Cossacks (the list, titles and plots of the books are direct evidence of this). It is from the life of his native places that he draws images, motives and themes. The writer himself spoke about it this way: “I was born on the Don, grew up there, studied and formed as a person ...”.
Despite the fact that Sholokhov focuses on describing the life of the Cossacks, his works are not limited to regional and local topics. On the contrary, using their example, the author manages to raise not only the problems of the country, but universal and philosophical ones. The writer's works reflect deep historical processes. Another distinctive feature of Sholokhov's work is connected with this - the desire to artistically reflect the turning points in the life of the USSR and how people who fell into this whirlpool of events felt.
Sholokhov was prone to monumentalism, he was attracted by issues related to social changes and the fate of peoples.
Early works
Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov began to write very early. The works (prose always remained preferable to him) of those years were devoted to the Civil War, in which he himself took a direct part, although he was still quite a youth.
Mastered the writing skill of Sholokhov with small form, that is, from stories that were published in three collections:
- "Azure steppe";
- "Don stories";
- "About Kolchak, nettles and other things."
Despite the fact that these works did not fall outside the scope of social realism and in many ways glorified Soviet power, they stood out against the background of other works of contemporary writers of Sholokhov. The fact is that already in these years Mikhail Alexandrovich Special attention devoted to the life of the people and the description of national characters. The writer tried to portray a more realistic and less romanticized picture of the revolution. There is cruelty, blood, betrayal in the works - Sholokhov tries not to smooth out the severity of time.
At the same time, the author does not romanticize death at all and does not poeticize cruelty. He places emphasis differently. The main thing is kindness and the ability to preserve humanity. Sholokhov wanted to show how "ugly the Don Cossacks simply died in the steppes." The originality of the writer's work lies in the fact that he raised the problem of revolution and humanism, interpreting actions from the point of view of morality. And most of all, Sholokhov was worried about fratricide, which accompanies any civil war. The tragedy of many of his heroes was that they had to shed their own blood.
Quiet Don
Perhaps the most famous book that Sholokhov wrote. We will continue the list of works by her, since the novel opens the next stage of the writer's work. The author took up writing the epic in 1925, immediately after the publication of the stories. Initially, he did not plan such a large-scale work, wishing only to portray the fate of the Cossacks in revolutionary times and their participation in the "suppression of the revolution." Then the book was called "Donshchina". But Sholokhov did not like the first pages he wrote, since the motives of the Cossacks would not have been clear to the average reader. Then the writer decided to start his story in 1912 and end in 1922. The meaning of the novel has changed, as has the title. Work on the work was carried out for 15 years. The final version of the book was published in 1940.
"Virgin Soil Upturned"
Another novel that was created by M. Sholokhov for several decades. A list of the writer's works is impossible without mentioning this book, since it is considered the second most popular after The Quiet Flows the Don. "Virgin Soil Upturned" consists of two books, the first was completed in 1932, and the second - in the late 50s.
The work describes the process of collectivization on the Don, witnessed by Sholokhov himself. The first book can generally be called a report from the scene. The author very realistically and colorfully recreates the drama of this time. Here there is dispossession, and meetings of farmers, and the killing of people, and the slaughter of cattle, and the plundering of collective farm grain, and the women's revolt.
The plot of both parts is based on the confrontation of class enemies. The action begins with a double plot - the secret arrival of Polovtsev and the arrival of Davydov, and also ends with a double denouement. The whole book rests on the opposition of reds and whites.
Sholokhov, works about the war: list
Books dedicated to the Great Patriotic War:
- The novel "They fought for the Motherland";
- The stories "The Science of Hatred", "The Fate of Man";
- Essays "In the South", "On the Don", "Cossacks", "In the Cossack Collective Farms", "Infamy", "Prisoners of War", "In the South";
- Publicism - “The struggle continues”, “The word about the Motherland”, “The executioners cannot escape the court of peoples!”, “Light and darkness”.
During the war, Sholokhov worked as a war correspondent for Pravda. The stories and essays describing these terrible events had some distinctive features, which identified Sholokhov as a battle writer and even survived in his post-war prose.
The author's essays can be called a chronicle of the war. Unlike other writers working in the same direction, Sholokhov never directly expressed his view of events, the characters spoke for him. Only at the end did the writer allow himself to sum up a little.
Sholokhov's works, despite the themes, retain a humanistic orientation. At the same time, the main character changes a little. It becomes a person who is able to realize the significance of his place in the world struggle and understand that he is responsible to his comrades-in-arms, relatives, children, life itself and history.
"They fought for their country"
We continue to analyze the creative heritage that Sholokhov left (list of works). The writer perceives war not as a fatal inevitability, but as a socio-historical phenomenon that tests the moral and ideological qualities of people. From the fates of individual characters, a picture of an epoch-making event is formed. Such principles formed the basis of the novel "They Fought for the Motherland", which, unfortunately, was never completed.
According to Sholokhov's plan, the work was to consist of three parts. The first was to describe the pre-war events and the struggle of the Spaniards against the Nazis. And already in the second and third the struggle would be described Soviet people with the invaders. However, no part of the novel was ever published. Only a few chapters have been published.
A distinctive feature of the novel is the presence of not only large-scale battle scenes, but also sketches of everyday soldier life, which often have a humorous coloring. At the same time, the soldiers are well aware of their responsibility to the people and the country. Their thoughts about home and native places become tragic as their regiment retreats. Therefore, they cannot justify the hopes placed on them.
Summing up
Passed a huge creative way Sholokhov Mikhail Alexandrovich All works of the author, especially when considered in chronological order, confirm this. If you take early stories and later, the reader will see how much the skill of the writer has grown. At the same time, he managed to maintain many motives, such as loyalty to his duty, humanity, devotion to family and country, etc.
But the works of the writer have not only artistic and aesthetic value. First of all, Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov strove to be a chronicler (a biography, a list of books and diary entries confirm this).