Mikhail Sholokhov
Mikhail Sholokhov was a prominent Russian novelist known for his epic narratives centered on the Cossack life. Born in 1905 in a modest village near the Don River, he grew up in a family with a strong work ethic and cultural influences, including a determined mother who taught herself to read and write. Sholokhov began his writing career in his teenage years and achieved significant fame with his monumental work, the Don Cossack tetralogy, which includes the celebrated novel "And Quiet Flows the Don." This work, published in multiple volumes between 1928 and 1940, deeply explores the lives of the Cossacks against the backdrop of historical upheaval, revealing their struggles and the evolving social landscape.
His literary achievements earned him numerous accolades, including the Stalin Prize in 1941, and he became a significant figure in Soviet literature, also engaging in political roles such as serving in the Supreme Soviet. Though some have criticized him as a communist apologist, his artistic representation of Russian life continues to resonate with readers worldwide. Sholokhov's legacy includes not only his novels but also adaptations in opera and film, marking him as a key figure in 20th-century literature. He passed away in 1984, leaving behind a rich body of work that highlights the complexity of human experiences within his cultural and historical context.
Mikhail Sholokhov
Russian novelist
- Born: May 24, 1905
- Birthplace: Kruzhilino, Russia
- Died: February 21, 1984
- Place of death: Kruzhilino, Soviet Union (now in Russia)
Biography
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov (SHOH-loh-kof), epic novelist of the Cossacks, was born in Kruzhilino, a small village near Veshenskaya on the river Don; he was the eighth child in the family. His father was a farmer, a cattle buyer, a clerk, and later the owner of a power mill. The family was of modest means, but the parents nevertheless managed to send the boy to school near Moscow. Sholokhov’s mother, half Turkish and half Cossack, was an illiterate woman of strong determination; she learned to read and write in order to be able to correspond with her son while he was away at school.
Sholokhov, forced to leave his school at Voronezh because of the German invasion, returned to his home when he was fifteen. His plans to teach school upset by the revolution, he was assigned by the Bolsheviks to various jobs, among them assignments in a statistical bureau, as a freight handler, as a food inspector, and as a mason. In 1922, during bandit raids in the region, he participated in some of the fighting.
When he was eighteen he began to write for various newspapers and magazines, and he wrote some short fiction before beginning his long novel and eventual masterpiece, the Don Cossack tetralogy, which was translated into English as And Quiet Flows the Don and The Don Flows Home to the Sea before the whole was combined as The Silent Don in 1942. This monumental work, composed over a ten-year period, appeared in Russia in four separate volumes in 1928, 1929, 1933, and 1940. With the first volume of the novel, the author became famous. His analysis of the lives of the Cossacks, showing how history was forcing them into new social roles, became popular because it was an intimate portrait of realistic regional life. The novel expresses something of the power and dignity of the human beings whose lives it portrays. Ivan Dzerzhinsky, the Soviet composer, used the Don novels as the basis of a highly popular opera, and it was a successful film as well. Largely on the basis of this work, Sholokhov received the Stalin Prize in 1941. More than a million copies of the book were sold in the Soviet Union during its first year of publication, and before the fourth appeared, the novel had gone through seventy-nine editions, had been translated into thirty-eight languages, and had sold more than four and a half million copies.
Sholokhov’s work on The Silent Don was not continuous. In 1932 he completed the first volume of a two-volume work, Seeds of Tomorrow; the second volume appeared in 1960. This novel, dealing with the building of a kholkoz, or collective farm, was also a great success in Russia and in other countries. Like the Don novel, it was filmed and made into an opera by Dzerzhinsky. It was also presented as a four-act play at the Simonov Studio Theatre. Until 1941, Sholokhov lived a quiet life in the Veshenskaya region, where he wrote, farmed, hunted, fished, and entertained his friends. When the Nazis invaded Russia in 1941, he became one of Russia’s “fighting correspondents,” settling in Moscow, where he lived until his death in 1984.
In 1937 he was elected a deputy to the Supreme Soviet. He was a member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and of the Praesidium Union of Soviet Writers. In 1955, during an official state celebration of his fiftieth birthday, he received the Order of Lenin. He was married to Maria Petrovna and had four children. Sholokhov has been criticized as a communist apologist, but most readers of his works agree in regarding him as an artist who managed to triumph over the propagandist. He is valued as an epical writer who portrayed a significant aspect of contemporary Russian life.
Author Works
Long Fiction
Tikhii Don, 1928–1940 (partial translation as And Quiet Flows the Don, 1934, also known as The Don Flows Home to the Sea, 1940; complete translation as The Silent Don, 1942, also known as And Quiet Flows the Don, 1967)
Podnyataya tselina, 1932, 1960 (translation of volume 1, Virgin Soil Upturned, 1935, also known as Seeds of Tomorrow, 1935; translation of volume 2, Harvest on the Don, 1960; complete translation as Virgin Soil Upturned, 1979)
Oni srazhalis za rodinu, 1943–1944 (serial), 1971 (book; They Fought for Their Country, 1959)
Sud’ba cheloveka, 1956–1957 (novella; The Fate of a Man, 1958)
Short Fiction
Donskiye rasskazy, 1926
Lazorevaya Step, 1926, 1931 (1931 edition includes Donskiye rasskazy; Tales from the Don, 1961)
Early Stories, 1966
Miscellaneous
Sobranie sochinenii, 1956–1960 (8 volumes; Collected Works in Eight Volumes, 1984)
One Man’s Destiny, and Other Stories, Articles, and Sketches, 1923–1963, 1967
At the Bidding of the Heart: Essays, Sketches, Speeches, Papers, 1973
Bibliography
Ermolaev, Herman. Mikhail Sholokhov and His Art. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982. A study of Sholokhov’s life and art, philosophy of life, and handling of style and structure, with a separate chapter on the historical sources of The Quiet Don and another on the question of plagiarism. Includes maps, tables (of similes), notes, and bibliography.
Klimenko, Michael. The World of Young Sholokhov: Vision of Violence. North Quincy, Mass.: Christopher Publishing House, 1972. The introduction discusses the Sholokhov canon as well as the man and his critics. Other chapters explore the genesis of his novels, his vision of life, his heroes, and his treatment of revolution. Includes a bibliography.
Medvedev, Roy. Problems in the Literary Biography of Mikhail Sholokhov. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1977. A piercing examining of The Quiet Don, exploring the issue of Sholokhov’s authorship and how it poses problems for his literary biography.
Muherjee, G. Mikhail Sholokhov: A Critical Introduction. New Delhi: Northern Book Center, 1992. A useful discussion of Sholokhov’s work and critical reactions to it.
Murphy, A. B., V. P. Butt, and H. Ermolaev. Sholokhov’s “Tikhii Don”: A Commentary in Two Volumes. Birmingham, England: Department of Russian Language and Literature, the University of Birmingham, 1997. An excellent study of The Silent Don.
Stewart, David Hugh. Mikhail Sholokov: A Critical Introduction. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967. Found in most university libraries, this accessible, 250-page overview of the man and his works includes bibliographical references.