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 Russian
writer, who was awarded the Nobel Prize
for Literature in 1965. Sholokhov's best-known work is the novel
Quiet Flows the Don (1928-40), the finest realist novel about
the Revolution. While Leo Tolstoi's novel War and Peace (1863-69)
immortalized the Napoleonic campaigns to the eve of the Decembrist
revolt, Quiet Flows the Don shows the destruction of the
Cossacks and the birth of a new society. After this magnificent
novel, Sholokhov's career as a writer began to decline, reaching
its nadir with the novella 'The Fate of a Man' (1956-57). It is
among the least impressive works produced by a Nobel writer, along
with Hemingway's posthumously published book True at First Light
(1999).
"It was the first really warm days of the year. But it was
good to sit there alone, abandoning myself completely to the stillness
and solitude, to take off my old army cap and let the breeze dry
my hair after heavy work of rowing, and to stare idly at the white
big-breasted clouds floating in the faded blue."
(from 'The Fate of a Man')
Mikhail Sholokhov was born in the Kruzhlinin hamlet, part of stanitsa
Veshenskaya, a former Region of the Don Cossack Army. His father
was a Russian of the lower middle classes. He had many occupations,
including farming, cattle trading, and milling. His illiterate mother
came from Ukrainian peasant stock and was the widow of a Cossack.
She learned to read and write in order to correspond with her son.
Sholokhov attended schools in Kargin, Moskow, Boguchar, and Veshenskaia,
but his formal education ended in 1918 when the civil war reached
the Upper Don region. Sholokhov joined the Bolshevik (Red) Army,
serving in the Don region during civil war. During this period Sholokhov
witnessed the anti-Bolshevik uprising of the Upper Don Cossacks
and took part in fighting anti-Soviet partisans, remnants of the
white army. These experiences were later recounted in his works.
When the Bolsheviks had secured their control of power, Sholokhov
went to Moscow, where he supported himself by doing manual labour.
He was a longshoreman, stonemason, and accountant (1922-24), but
also participated in writers "seminars"interrmittently. His first
work to appear in print was the satirical article 'A Test', which
was published in 1922 in the Moscow newspaper Yunosheskaya Pravda.
'The Birthmark,' Sholokhov's first story, appeared when he was 19.
In 1924 Sholokhov returned to Veshesnkaya and devoted himself entirely
to writing. In the same year he married Mariia Petrovna Gromoslavskaia;
they had two daughters and two sons.
 Sholokhov's
first book, DONSKIE RASSKAZY (Tales of the Don), a collection of
short stories, appeared in 1925. The dominant theme in the stories
is the bitter political strife within a village or a family during
the civil war and the early 1920s. Sholokhov joined the Communist
Party in 1932, and in 1937 he was elected to the Soviet Parliament.
He wrote to Stalin about the brutal mistreatment of collective farmers
in 1933 and complained about mass arrests in 1938. This letter led
to a treason case against the author, but he was spared and promoted
as the leading figure of the Soviet literary establishment. Stalin
followed closely Sholokhov's literary career and influenced publication
of his works.
Sholokhov gained world fame with his novel TICHY DON (Quiet Flows
the Don), which won the Stalin Prize in 1941. The work was originally
published in serialized form between the years 1928 and 1940. The
author was 22 years old when he submitted the first volume for publication
and 25 when three-quarters of the work was composed. In the second
volume Sholokhov relies upon documentary material. The third book's
frank account of ill treatment of Cossacks by Communists caused
the journal Oktiabr to suspend publication in 1929. Permission
to resume was only accorded after reference to Stalin himself. Book
4 did not appear in complete form until 1940, 15 years after the
young author had first written its early scenes.
"I will be happy if the English reader sees behind descriptions
of the life of Don Cossacks, so strange to him, those colossal
shifts in everyday existence and human psychology which occurred
as the result of the war and the revolution."
(Sholokhov in his foreword to the English edition)
Quiet Flows the Don presents the struggle of the Whites
against the Reds more or less objectively. Sholokhov portrays the
Cossacks realistically and reproduces their speech faithfully. This
also inspired orthodox Communist to accuse the writer of adopting
uncritically a conservative Cossack point of view. The story traces
the progress of the Cossack Grigory Melekhov, a tragic hero. He
is based on a historical prototype, Kharlampii Ermakov, one of the
first Cossacks to rise against the communist in 1919. He was later
imprisoned and shot in 1929. Like many figures of classical tragedy,
Melekhov fate is destined by his own virtues. He first supports
the Whites, then the Reds and finally joins nationalist guerrillas
in their conflict with the Red Army. Back at home a former friend,
a hard-line communist, destroys him. However, Grigory's political
and war experiences are overshadowed by the story of his tragic
love. Sholokhov's prose is ornamental with prolific use of colour,
figures of speech, and careful attention to details.
During World War II Sholokhov wrote about the Soviet war efforts
for various journals, among them Pravda and Krasnaia zvedza.
He received the Stalin Prize for Literature in 1941 and the Lenin
Prize in 1960. Sholokhov's second novel. Virgin Soil Upturned,
appeared in two parts, 'Seeds of Tomorrow' in 1932 and 'Harvest
on the Don' in 1960. The novel depicts the collectivisation of agriculture
in a Don Cossack village. It is perhaps the best-known and most
sympathetic description of this period in Russian literature. It
also became required reading for all collective farm directors.
In the first volumes, the dramatic events are written in rapid sequence
giving the feel of a journalistic report. The second volume, which
covers only the summer of 1930, shows the decline of Sholokhov's
artistic ambitions and ideological orthodoxy. The reader learns
nothing about the terrorism and famine of 1932-33 - During the 1933
famine Sholokhov saved thousands of lives by persuading Stalin to
send grain to the Upper Don region. No new literary work of his
has appeared since 1969.
 In
1959 Sholokhov accompanied the Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev
on a trip to Europe and the United States, and in 1961 he became
a member of the Central Committee. In most of his speeches and journalistic
writings Sholokhov faithfully follows the official policy of the
day. Sholokhov died on January 21, 1984 in Veshenskaya, where he
had lived from 1924. By 1980 almost seventy-nine million copies
of his works had been printed in the Soviet Union in eighty-four
languages.
"The story of Mikhail Sholokhov's rise to his reign as king
of Soviet literary officialdom is none other than a supreme farce.
Decade after decade his pen failed to create anything worth reading.
Meanwhile, his mouth created nothing but propagandistic banalities."
(Vassily Aksyonov, an exiled Russian novelist in the New York
Times, March 10, 1985)
Quiet Flows the Don is Sholokhov most controversial work
and it has been alleged by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn among others,
that much of the novel was plagiarized from the writer Fyodor Kryukov,
a Cossak and anti-Bolshevik, who died in 1920. Several studies have
been published on this subject: R.A. Medvedev's Problems in the
Literary Biography of Mikhail Sholokhov (1977) was criticized
in Slavic and East European Journal in 1976 by Herman Ermolaev.
Additional information is in Brian Murphy's studies of Tikhiy
Don in the New Zealand Slavonic Journal (1975-77) and
the Journal of Russian Studies, no. 34 (1977). Although it
must be acknowledged that Sholokhov's other works are not of the
same literary quality, the accusations remain largely unproven.
Critics have argued, that he could not have written all or part
of the novel because of his young age and because Quiet Flows
the Don describes atrocities on both sides impartially. In 1984
Geir Kjetsaa and others published their study The Authorship
of the Quiet Don, where computer study supported the authorship
of Sholokhov. Most of the manuscripts were lost when the Germans
occupied Veshenskaya, but in 1987 some two thousand pages were discovered
and authenticated.
For further reading: Russian Fiction and Soviet Ideology
by E. Simmons (1958); Mikhali Sholokhov: A Critical Introduction
by D.H. Stewart (1967); Sholokhov by C.G. Bearne (1969); The World
of Young Sholokhov by M. Klimenko (1972); Sholokhov: A Critical
Appreciation by L. Yakimenko (1973); Problems in the Literary
Biography of Mikhail Sholokhov by R. Medvedev (1977); Mikhail
Sholokhov and His Art by H. Ermolaev (1982); The Authorship of
the 'Quiet Don' by Geir Kjetsaa et. al. (1984); Meetings With
Sholokhov by A.V. Sofronov (1985); "Tikhii Don": Rasskazy o protitipakh
by G.Ia Sivovolov (1991); Kto napisal "Tikhii Don" by Lev Efimovich
Kolodnyi (1995); Sholokhov's 'Tikhii Don by A.B. Murphy, V.P.
Butt and Herman Ermolaev (1997, 2 vols.)
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