Mikhail Sholokhov
Mikhail Sholokhov | |
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Russian SFSR, Soviet Union[1] | |
Occupation | Novelist, short story writer |
Nationality | Soviet |
Notable awards | Nobel Prize in Literature 1965 Lenin Prize 1960 Stalin Prize 1941 |
Signature | |
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov (Russian: Михаил Александрович Шолохов, IPA:
Life and work
Sholokhov was born in the Russian Empire, in the "land of the
Sholokhov attended schools in Karginskaya , Moscow, Boguchar, and Veshenskaya until 1918, when he joined the Bolshevik side in the Russian Civil War at the age of 13. He spent the next few years fighting. During the Russian Civil War, the inogorodnye tended to support the Reds while the Don Cossacks tended to support the Whites.
Sholokhov began writing at 17. He completed his first literary work, the short story "The Birthmark", at 19. In 1922 Sholokhov moved to Moscow to become a journalist, but had to support himself through manual labour. He was a
Sholokhov's first book was Tales from the Don, a collection of stories largely based on his personal experiences in his native region during World War I and the Russian Civil War; it was published in 1926. The story "Nakhalyonok", partly based on his own childhood, was later made into a popular film.
In the same year, Sholokhov began writing
Another novel, Virgin Soil Upturned, which earned a Lenin Prize, took 28 years to complete. It is composed of two parts, Seeds of Tomorrow (1932) and Harvest on the Don (1960), and reflects life during collectivization in the Don area. It was heralded as a powerful example of socialist realism. Virgin Soil Upturned was translated and widely read in China, where it influenced China's socialist literature.[5]
The short story "The Fate of a Man" (1957) was made into a popular Russian film.During World War II, Sholokhov wrote about the Soviet war effort for various journals. He also covered the devastation caused by Wehrmacht troops along the Don. His mother was killed when Veshenskaya was bombed in 1942.
Sholokhov's unfinished novel They Fought for Their Country is about World War II (known in the Soviet Union, and now in Russia, as the
Sholokhov's collected works were published in eight volumes between 1956 and 1960, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1965.
Authorship of texts
First rumors of Sholokhov's supposed plagiarism appeared in 1928 following the success of the first two volumes of And Quiet Flows the Don: it was speculated that the author stole the manuscript from a dead White Army officer.[6][7] Sholokhov asked the Pravda newspaper to prove his authorship, submitting his manuscripts of the first three volumes of And Quiet Flows the Don and the plan of the fourth one. In 1929 a special commission was formed that accepted Sholokhov's authorship. In the conclusion signed by four experts, the commission stated that there was no evidence of plagiarism on the one hand, and on the other hand the manuscripts' style was close to that of Sholokhov's previous book, Tales from the Don.[8]
The allegations resurfaced in the 1960s with
In 1984 Norwegian Slavicist and mathematician Geir Kjetsaa, in a monograph written with three other colleagues, provided statistical analyses of sentence lengths showing that Mikhail Sholokhov was likely the true author of And Quiet Flows the Don.[12][13]
The debate focused on the published book, because Sholokhov's archive was destroyed in a bomb raid during the
In 1999 the
During the 2000s a Russian-Israeli linguist Zeev Bar-Sella once again stated that Sholokhov was not the true author of And Quiet Flows the Don as well as the other works attributed to him. Based on his own textual analysis of the novel he asserts that the manuscripts were written by Sholokhov not earlier than 1929 and names the writer Viktor Sevsky (real name Veniamin Krasnushkin) as the true author.[16]
Political and social activity
Sholokhov met
Sholokhov joined the
On a visit to Moscow in 1938, Sholokhov met Yevgenia Yezhova, wife of Nikolai Yezhov, the People's Commissar for Internal Affairs (NKVD), and checked into a hotel room with her, unaware that the room was bugged. Yezhov heard the recording and attacked Yezhova. On 23 October 1938, Sholokhov met Stalin in the Kremlin to complain that he had been put under surveillance in Veshenskaya, but when Yezhov was summoned to explain, he claimed not to know why. They met again on 31 October: this time the officer who had been investigating Sholokhov was also summoned. He said his orders had come from Moscow, but Yezhov again denied giving the order.[21] Sholokhov claimed that he completed the fourth and last volume of And Quiet Flows the Don and its sequel on 21 December 1939, the day when the USSR was celebrating what was supposedly Stalin's 60th birthday, and celebrated by opening a bottle of wine that Stalin had given him. He then wrote to Stalin to say how he had marked the special day.[22]
In 1959 he accompanied Soviet Premier
He commented on the Sinyavsky–Daniel trial at the 23rd Congress by saying that the prison terms meted out to Sinyavsky and Daniel had been much too lenient compared to the "revolutionary understanding of what is right" during the 1920s, which turned part of the Soviet intelligentsia against him and resulted in two open letters by Lydia Chukovskaya and Yuri Galanskov addressed to Sholokhov.[23][24]
Late years
Sholokhov almost stopped writing after 1969 and spent the late years at the
Mikhail Sholokhov died on 21 February 1984, from laryngeal cancer. He was buried in the grounds of his house at the Vyoshenskaya stanitsa along with his wife Maria Petrovna Sholokhova (nee Gromoslavskaya, 1902—1992).[27]
Honours and awards
- Soviet Union
Hero of Socialist Labor , twice (1967, 1980)
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Six Orders of Lenin (1939, 1955, 1965, 1967, 1975, 1980)
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Order of the October Revolution (1972) | |
Order of the Patriotic War, 1st class (1945) | |
Jubilee Medal "In Commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin" (1970) | |
Medal "For the Defence of Stalingrad" (1942) | |
Medal "For the Defence of Moscow" (1944) | |
Medal "For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945" (1945) | |
Medal "For Valiant Labour in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945" (1945) | |
Jubilee Medal "Twenty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945" (1965)
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Jubilee Medal "Thirty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945" (1975) | |
Medal "Veteran of Labour" (1974) |
- Foreign
Grand Master of the Order of Cyril and Methodius (Bulgaria) | |
Order of Georgi Dimitrov (Bulgaria) | |
Star of People's Friendship (East Germany) | |
Order of Sukhbaatar (Mongolia) |
Legacy
- An 2448 Sholokhov.
- Sholokhov Moscow State University for Humanities bears his name.
- His house at the Vyoshenskaya stanitsa was turned into the National Sholokhov Museum-Reserve.[27]
- Monuments in Moscow and Rostov-on-Don.
- Grigory and Aksinya and Grigory and Aksinya in a boat sculptures in the Vyoshenskaya stanitsa and Rostov-on-Don, respectfully.
- The Moscow National Guard Presidential Cadets School is named after him.
Selected publications
- Donskie Rasskazy, 1925 – Tales of the Don.
- Lazorevaja Step, 1926.
- Tikhii Don, 4 vol., 1928–1940 (The Quiet Don) – three-part film version, directed by Sergei Gerasimovand starring P. Glebov, L. Khityaeva, Z. Kirienko and E. Bystrltskaya, was produced in 1957–1958.
- Podnyataya Tselina, 1932–1960 – Virgin Soil Upturned (1935); Harvest on the Don (1960).
- Oni Srazhalis Za Rodinu, 1942 – They Fought for Their Country.
- Nauka Nenavisti, 1942 – Hate / The Science of Hatred.
- Slovo O Rodine, 1951.
- Sudba Cheloveka, 1956–1957 – Destiny of a Man, directed by Sergei Bondarchuk and starring Sergei Bondarchuk, Pavlik Boriskin, Zinaida Kirienko, Pavel Volkov, Yuri Avelin, and K. Alekseev, was produced in 1959.
- Sobranie Sochinenii, 1956–1958 – collected works (8 vols.)
- Oni Srazhalis Za Rodinu, 1959 – They Fought for their Country
- Sobranie Sochinenii, 1962 – collected works (8 vols.)
- Early Stories, 1966.
- One Man's Destiny, and Other Stories, Articles, and Sketches, 1923–1963, 1967
- Fierce and Gentle Warriors, 1967.
- Po Veleniju Duši, 1970 – At the Bidding of the Heart
- Sobranie Sochinenii, 1975 (8 vols.)
- Rossiya V Serdtse, 1975.
- SLOVO O RODINE, 1980.
- Collected Works, 1984 (8 vols.)
- Sobranie Sochinenii, 1985 (collected works) (8 vols.)
- Sholokhov I Stalin, 1994.
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov. Encyclopaedia Britannica
- ^ "Sholokhov". Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.
- ^ Ryan 1991, p. 2716.
- ^ Ermolaev 1982, p. 9.
- OCLC 932368688.
- ^ Struve 1971, p. 137.
- ^ Struve 1971, p. [page needed].
- ^ Письмо в редакцию // Правда. 1929. 29 марта. С. 4. (A Letter to the Editorial Office. Pravda, 1929, 29 March, p. 4.) (Russian)
- ^ a b c d Kuznetsov, F. (2003) Рукопись "Тихого дона" и проблема авторства, pp. 96–206 in Новое о Михаиле Шолохове: Исследования и материалы. Moscow: Gorky Institute of World Literature
- New York Times
- ^ Chernyshova, Veronika (30 November 2006). "Ответ антишолоховедению". exlibris.ng.ru. Archived from the original on 18 July 2011. Retrieved 12 October 2010.
- ^ Kjetsaa et al. 1984, p. [page needed].
- ^ Hjort N. L. (2007), "And quiet does not flow the Don: statistical analysis of a quarrel between Nobel laureates Archived 30 October 2008 at the Wayback Machine", Consilience Archived 5 October 2015 at the Wayback Machine (editor—Østreng W.) 134–140 (Oslo: Centre for Advanced Study at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters).
- ^ Karamysheva, Lyudmila (25 May 2000). РУКОПИСИ ВПРАВДУ НЕ ГОРЯТ!. Trud (Russian newspaper)
- ^ "Подлинность рукописи "Тихого Дона" установлена". lenta.ru. 25 October 1999. Archived from the original on 13 May 2013. Retrieved 4 June 2013.
- ^ Bar-Sella 2005, p. [page needed].
- ^ ФЭБ: Переписка – 1997 (описание)
- ^ McSmith 2015, p. 207.
- ^ McSmith 2015, pp. 207–209.
- ^ Stalin 1995, p. 232.
- ^ Jensen 2002, pp. 166159–160.
- ^ McSmith 2015, p. 221.
- ^ Quoted in Morson, Gary Saul (8 February 2019) "Collaborator Laureate". Wall Street Journal
- ^ Sinyavsky–Daniel trial article at Kommersant №12, p. 22, 3 April 2015 (in Russian)
- ^ Aleksei Torgashev. Who and how spent his Nobel Prize article at Kommersant, from Ogoniok №41, p. 16, 16 October 2005 (in Russian)
- ^ Ligachev 2018, p. [page needed].
- ^ a b Official website of the National Sholokhov Museum-Reserve
Cited sources
- Bar-Sella, Zeev (2005). Literaturnyĭ kotlovan : proekt "Pisatelʹ Sholokhov". Moskva: Rossiĭskiĭ gos. gumanitarnyĭ universitet. OCLC 61489007.
- Ermolaev, Herman (1982). Mikhail Sholokhov and his art. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691629834.
- Jensen, Marc (2002). Stalin's Loyal Executioner: People's Commissar Nikolai Ezhov, 1895–1940. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press. pp. 166159–160. ISBN 978-0-8179-2902-2.
- McSmith, Andy (2015). Fear and the Muse Kept Watch: The Russian Masters from Akhmatova and Pasternak to Shostakovich and Eisenstein Under Stalin. New York: The New Press. ISBN 978-1-59558-056-6.
- Ryan, Bryan (1991). Major 20th-century writers: a selection of sketches from Contemporary authors. Farmington Hills: Gale Research. ISBN 0810379155.
- Stalin, Josef (1 January 1995). Naumov, Oleg V.; Hlevnûk, Oleg Vitalʹevič; Lih, Lars T. (eds.). Stalin's Letters to Molotov: 1925-1936. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-06211-3.
- Struve, Gleb (1971). Russian literature under Lenin and Stalin, 1917-1953 (1st ed.). Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0806109312.
- Kjetsaa, Geir; Gustavsson, S; Beckman, B; Gil, S (1984). The Authorship of The Quiet Don. International Specialized Book Service Incorporated. ISBN 978-0-391-02948-4.
- Ligachev, Yegor (23 February 2018). Inside Gorbachev's Kremlin: The Memoirs Of Yegor Ligachev. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-429-97942-2.
Further reading
- Boeck, Brian J, Stalin's Scribe: Literature, Ambition, and Survival: The Life of Mikhail Sholokhov (2019) excerpt
- Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr. "Sholokhov and the riddle of ‘The Quiet Don’". The Times Literary Supplement, 24 May 2016 (originally published 1974).
External links
- Nobel-winners.com's article on Michail Sholokhov
- 107 years of Sholokhov, from SovLit.net.
- Mikhail Sholokhov at IMDb
- On-line Sholokhov texts (Russian)
- Politicians Praise Soviet-Era Writer Mikhail Sholokhov’s Contribution to World Literature
- Sholokhov Moscow State University for Humanities
- Stremya Tihogo Dona: Solzhenitsyn's accusations of plagiarism (in Russian)
- An interview with Bar-Sela (in Russian)
- And Quiet Does not Flow the Don: Statistical Analysis of a Quarrel between Nobel Laureates (PDF)
- (in Russian) Sholokhov: biography, photos, prose, critical essays
- Mikhail Sholokhov on Nobelprize.org