"Quietly Flows the Don" by Mikhail Sholokhov: "Not exaggerating, I drew a harsh reality that preceded the insurrection…"

May 24, 2017 marks the 112th anniversary of the birth of Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov (1905-1984), whose name and work do not need to be presented to the general reader. The Presidential Library portal provides rare materials revealing the uncommon personality of Sholokhov, the depth and scope of the problems that he raised. In the electronic fund of the library there are lifetime editions of the writer's works, literary studies and his photo portraits.

Of particular note there is the electronic copy of I. Lezhnev's book "Mikhail Sholokhov", published in 1941, available on the Presidential Library portal. It reveals the history of the novel "Quietly Flows the Don", which became the largest literary event of the XX century. "Sholokhov conceived to write a history of the Cossacks of our era, an art encyclopedia of the former Cossack class", - writes Lezhnyov.

The very reality of the 1920s brought young Cossack to this idea, in relation to which he was not an outsider. Red cavalry soldier, Sholokhov, like his protagonist Grigory Melekhov, always asked "cursed questions": who needs it so that his brother goes to his brother?..

Sholokhov was born in 1905 in the farm of Kruzhilin in the Vyoshenskaya village of the former Don region. When the boy grew up, his father took him to the city to study, and an illiterate mother, longing for her son, learned literacy in order to write him. Perhaps this was prompted by her son's growing talent, which she intuitively perceived in every line.

The future writer studied until 1918, until the Russian lands shuddered from the fratricidal war. And this war covered the Don Cossack villages.

In his short autobiography, M. A. Sholokhov writes: "Since 1920, I served and mooed around the Don land. The gangs chased us. I also chased the gangs that dominated Don until 1922. I had to go to different situations… I published the first book in 1925. Since 1926 I have been writing "Quietly Flows the Don…". 

The result of Sholokhov's creative work of that period is six large books: four volumes of the "Quietly Flows the Don", the first volume of "Virgin Soil Upturned" and his first work is a collected work of “Tales of the Don”.

In the literary milieu, according to Lezhnev, Sholokhov was greeted unfriendly. Critics of the times of RAAPA were as ruthless as they were mediocre. They wrote, say, about the fact that Sholokhov is obsessed with the "ideology of the vacillating middle peasant". Such a charge in those years could break anyone, but not Sholokhov, whose truth was the truth of his stanitsa, his whole being. Fortunately, the oldest proletarian writer A. S. Serafimovich was still alive, who highly appreciated the first book of the Don Cossack family - "The Don Stories". The critic noted the special juiciness of the language of Sholokhov, an enormous knowledge of the reality described. And also a sense of artistic measure, a sharp eye: "Like a steppe flower", the young author Serafimovich quoted, "Sholokhov's stories are a living spot. Simply, brightly, you can feel what you are telling about". 

When a young writer in 1927 sent the first volume of the "Quietly Flows the Don" to the editorial office of the journal "October", they reacted to the manuscript with considerable restraint. But since the novel dealt with the Cossacks, and the honorary editors of the journal consisted of A. S. Serafimovich, who was a native of the Cossack family, then for the sake of faithfulness they handed him the manuscript of 20 author's sheets for the final conclusion.

"It was not easy for the old writer to read it! - Lezhnev writes in his book. - Little-experienced in editorial orders, Sholokhov presented the manuscript, copied on the typewriter, - absolutely without intervals!.. Serafimovich read and saw that this was an artistic masterpiece. And then, in 1928, the printing of the "Quietly Flows the Don" began from the January issue of the magazine.

A huge literary event was the sudden appearance of the first two books of such an outstanding work. This gave rise to some of the brethren on the pen to doubt: a product of this magnitude and strength could not, in their opinion, write a 23-year-old boy from a remote village of Don 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 "Quietly Flows the Don", which often go beyond the scope of philological science.

"…Some orthodox "leaders" of RAAPA accused me of that, - complained Sholokhov in a letter to Maxim Gorky, that I seem to justify the uprising, citing facts of the infringement of the Cossacks of the upper Don. Is it so? Not thickening colors, I drew a harsh reality that preceded the uprising… I'm sick of this for a year and a half for my work and I will be happy for every Your word". 

A new shock for the writer was the story of the publication in 1969 of fresh chapters from the novel "They fought for their Motherland". The truth about the repressions of 1937, told in them, did not suit the then government. And yet after the meeting with Leonid Brezhnev, the chapters were published in the newspaper Pravda. 

Sholokhov's need for truth, no matter how heavy it may be, the desire to reflect it in all contradictions was noted by all who fell happiness to communicate with the writer. It was a lot of hard work and great happiness to get on a piece of white paper on the grain of this truth. But after all, the response was: "Sholokhov - judging by the first word - is talented", M. Gorky wrote after his first acquaintance with the "Quietly Flows the Don". "This is a joy. Rus’ is so  talented".