Mikhail Sholokhov and the truth of the "Quiet Flows the Don" suffered by him - in the Presidential Library collections

May 24, 2018 marks the 113th anniversary of the birth of Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov (1905-1984), an outstanding writer of world renown. The Presidential Library portal contains little-known materials that reveal the identity and scale of Sholokhov's personality, the depth of the problems he developed in the literature. The electronic collections include lifetime editions of the writer's works, literary studies of his work, picturesque and photographic portraits.

The portal of the Presidential Library provides an electronic copy of I. Lezhnev's book "Mikhail Sholokhov" (1941). It reveals the history of the creation of two epoch-making novels of the writer - "Quiet Flows the Don" and "Virgin Soil Upturned", reflects the key moments of the writer's biography.

The period of urban studies was short lived for a gifted farm boy from the village of Vyoshenskaya on the Don. The Civil War began: the brother went to his brother, the abyss, dividing the Cossacks into red and white, passed, sometimes, one kuren. "Universities" Sholokhov, like the revered writer Maxim Gorky, became life itself. Having managed almost an adolescent to take part in the Civil War, and then, serving in the dressing-room, Mikhail began to realize the need to write about everything he saw, however tragic the truth might be.

According to Lezhnyov in his book, in 1923 the 18-year-old Sholokhov came to Moscow. He was not a writer yet, and in order to feed himself, he had to work as a laborer, a loader, a mason, a clerk. In his more than brief autobiography, he reports: "I have been writing since 1923, and since that year I have been published in Komsomol newspapers and magazines. The first book was published in 1925. Since 1926 I write "Quiet Flows the Don" ... ".

To create a broad historical drama from the life of the Cossacks, the beginning writer left for Vyoshenskaya and stayed there until the end of his life. The results of the creative work of the prose writer of that period: a collection of Don stories, four volumes of “Quiet Flows the Don”, the first volume of Virgin Soil Upturned. "Quiet Flows the Don" both in size, and in historical coverage, and in artistic skill is the largest work of world literature.

"Cossacks slowly and tightly turned towards Soviet power, and the writer in his portrayal of the Cossacks is nowhere ahead, sustains the pace", - writes Lezhnyov. - He draws a bold hand reality in all its complexity, contradictions, conflicts and difficulties, realistically shows how difficulties are overcome in reality. This tells his books more sincerity, seriousness, genuine artistic truthfulness".

The merit of the discovery of artistic talent Sholokhov belongs to the elder of the literary department of that time - writer A. S. Serafimovich. To the first youthful book of the beginning author - "Don stories" - he wrote the foreword, in which he highly appreciated the work of the young writer. However, this authoritative recognition did not save Sholokhov from further literary ordeals and the struggle against RAPP. When in 1927 he sent the first volume of the "Quiet Flows the Don" to the editorial office of the journal "October", his colleagues on the pen were more than cool about the manuscript. At the editorial board there was almost a verdict: we do not need a biographical novel about the old, pre-war Cossacks, something very far from the "life-lines", devoid of ideological and political acuteness. But since the editorial board consisted of Serafimovich, who was a native of the Cossack family, he was given a manuscript of 20 author's sheets for a final report.

"It was not easy for the old writer to read it! - Lezhnyov 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 "Quiet Flows the Don" began from the January issue of the magazine". 

A hot review of A. S. Serafimovich appeared in the newspaper “Pravda” on April 19, 1928. A well-known writer compared a novice novelist to a young eagle that developed huge wings.

"It's not true", - Lezhnyov cites in his book Serafimovich, who sharply objected to the "Rappovites" - he did not draw people, not written out, it's not on paper. And they fell out alive with a shining crowd. Everyone in his own way walks, turns his head. Everyone has their own laughter, each one in his own way hates. And love sparkles, sparkles and unhappiness for everyone in its own way ... This ability to give each one its own features, create a unique face, unique inner human order, this huge ability immediately took Sholokhov, and he was seen".

A huge literary event was the appearance of the first two books of such an outstanding work. This gave rise to some of Sholokhov's fellow feathers on the pen to doubt: a work of this magnitude and strength could not, supposedly, be written by a 23-year-old boy from a remote Don village with four classes of gymnasium education.

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

Most researchers still believe that the genius writer managed to transmit the drama of the Cossacks in its entirety in his first novel, to disclose in his works the contradiction between the eternal, epic - and temporary, transient, which gives his narrative a tragic and simultaneously heroic character. Never Sholokhov compared the truths of the novels and stories he wrote with the "party line" or the latest trends of the RAPP, - he kept a record to his people.