Vladimir Vasiliev. How Mikhail Sholokhov received the Nobel Prize in Literature Sholokhov, laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature

Sholokhov As is known, in 1965 the world community highly appreciated the contribution of Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov to world literature and for his great services he was awarded the Nobel Prize. Indeed, in 1965 Mikhail became the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

SHOLOKHOV MIKHAIL ALEXANDROVICH Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov (1905–1984). Russian writer, Nobel Prize laureate, laureate of the State and Lenin Prizes of the USSR, twice Hero of Socialist Labor. Author of the novels “Quiet Don”, “Virgin Soil Upturned”, “They Fought for

SHOLOKHOV, Mikhail Alexandrovich (1905–1984), writer 296 I don’t have a snack after the first glass. “The Fate of Man,” story (1957; filmed in 1959) ? Dept. ed. – M., 1964, p. 42 297 There was a cult, but there was also a personality! About Stalin, shortly after the 20th Congress of the CPSU. “All this talk about the cult is schoolboyism.

Mikhail Sholokhov is the greatest writer of the 20th century, the author of cult works (“Quiet Don”, “Virgin Soil Upturned”), which were published not only in the USSR, but also in foreign countries. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov was born on May 11 (24 according to the new style) in 1905 in the north of the Rostov region, in the picturesque village of Veshenskaya.

The future writer grew up and was raised as the only child in the family in a small house in the Kruzhilinsky farmstead, where commoner Alexander Mikhailovich Sholokhov and his wife Anastasia Danilovna lived. Due to the fact that Sholokhov’s father worked for hire and had no official income, the family often traveled from place to place.

Anastasia Danilovna is an orphan. Her mother came from a Cossack family, and her father came from serf peasants in the Chernigov province, and later moved to the Don. At the age of 12, she went to serve a certain landowner Popova and was married not out of love, but out of convenience, to the rich village ataman Kuznetsov. After the woman’s daughter was stillborn, she did an extraordinary thing for those times - she went to Sholokhov.

Anastasia Danilovna was an interesting young lady: she was original and illiterate, but at the same time she was naturally endowed with a sharp mind and insight. The writer’s mother learned to read and write only when her son entered the gymnasium, so that she could independently write letters to her child, without the help of her husband.

Mikhail Aleksandrovich was considered an illegitimate child (in the Don such children were called “nakhalenki”, and, it is worth saying, the Cossack guys did not like them), initially had the surname Kuznetsov and thanks to this he had the privilege of receiving a “Cossack” plot of land. But after the death of Anastasia Danilovna’s previous husband in 1912, the lovers were able to legitimize their relationship, and Mikhail became Sholokhov, the son of a tradesman.

Alexander Mikhailovich’s homeland is the Ryazan province, he comes from a wealthy dynasty: his grandfather was a merchant of the third guild, engaged in buying grain. Sholokhov Sr. worked as a cattle buyer and also sowed grain on Cossack lands. Therefore, there was enough money in the family; at least the future writer and his parents did not live from hand to mouth.

In 1910, the Sholokhovs left the Kruzhilinsky farm due to the fact that Alexander Mikhailovich went to serve a merchant in the village of Karginskaya, which is located in the Bokovsky district of the Rostov region. At the same time, the future writer studied preschool literacy; home teacher Timofey Mrykhin was invited for these purposes. The boy liked to pore over textbooks, he studied writing and learned to count.

Despite his diligence in his studies, Misha was mischievous and loved to play on the street with the neighboring boys from morning to evening. However, Sholokhov’s childhood and youth are reflected in his stories. He meticulously described what he had to observe, and what gave inspiration and endlessly pleasant memories: fields with golden rye, the breath of a cool breeze, the smell of freshly cut grass, the azure banks of the Don and much more - all this provided a basis for creativity.

Mikhail Alexandrovich entered the Karginsky parish school in 1912. It is noteworthy that the young man’s teacher was Mikhail Grigorievich Kopylov, who became the prototype of the hero from the world famous “Quiet Don”. In 1914, he fell ill with eye inflammation, after which he went to the capital for treatment.

Three years later he was transferred to the Bogucharsky gymnasium for boys. Graduated from four classes. During his studies, the young man became engrossed in the works of the great classics, and especially adored the works of.

In 1917, the seeds of revolution began to appear. Socialist ideas, which wanted to overthrow and get rid of the monarchical system, were not easy for the peasants and workers. The demands of the Bolshevik revolution were partially fulfilled, and the life of the common man changed before our eyes.

In 1917, Alexander Mikhailovich became the manager of a steam mill in the village of Elanskaya, in the Rostov region. In 1920, the family moved to the village of Karginskaya. It was there that Alexander Mikhailovich died in 1925.

As for the revolution, Sholokhov did not take part in it. He was not for the Reds and was indifferent to the Whites. I took the winning side. In 1930, Sholokhov received a party card and became a member of the All-Union Communist Bolshevik Party.

He showed his best side: he did not participate in counter-revolutionary movements, and had no deviations from the ideology of the party. Although there is a “black spot” in Sholokhov’s biography, at least the writer did not refute this fact: in 1922, Mikhail Alexandrovich, being a tax inspector, was sentenced to death for exceeding his official powers.

Later, the punishment was changed to a year of compulsory labor thanks to the cunning of the parents, who brought a fake birth certificate to the court so that Sholokhov could be tried as a minor. After this, Mikhail Alexandrovich wanted to become a student again and get a higher education. But the young man was not accepted into the preparatory courses at the workers' faculty, since he did not have the appropriate papers. Therefore, the fate of the future Nobel Prize laureate was such that he earned his living through hard physical labor.

Literature

Mikhail Alexandrovich began to write seriously in 1923; his creative career began with small feuilletons in the newspaper “Youthful Truth”. At that time, three satirical stories were published under the signature of Mich. Sholokhov: “Test”, “Three”, “Inspector”. The story by Mikhail Sholokhov, entitled “The Beast,” tells the story of the fate of food commissar Bodyagin, who, upon returning to his homeland, learned that his father was an enemy of the people. This manuscript was being prepared for publication in 1924, but the almanac “Molodogvardeets” did not consider it necessary to print this work on the pages of the publication.

Therefore, Mikhail Alexandrovich began to collaborate with the newspaper “Young Leninist”. He was also published in other Komsomol newspapers, where stories included in the “Don” series and the collection “Azure Steppe” were sent. Speaking about the work of Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov, one cannot help but touch upon the epic novel “Quiet Don,” which consists of four volumes.

It is often compared in importance to another work of Russian classics - the manuscript “War and Peace”. “Quiet Don” is one of the key novels in the literature of the 20th century, which to this day is required reading in educational institutions and universities.

But few people know that because of the book telling about the life of the Don Cossacks, Sholokhov was accused of plagiarism. However, the debate about Mikhail Alexandrovich’s literary theft has not subsided to this day. After the publication of “Quiet Don” (the first two volumes, 1928, “October” magazine), discussions began in literary circles regarding the problem of the authorship of M. A. Sholokhov’s texts.

Some researchers, and simply lovers of literature, believed that Mikhail Alexandrovich, without a twinge of conscience, appropriated for himself the manuscript, which was found in the field bag of a white officer who was shot by the Bolsheviks. Rumor has it that anonymous calls were received. An unknown old woman spoke into the telephone receiver to the editor of the newspaper A. Serafimovich that the novel belonged to her murdered son.

Alexander Serafimovich did not react to provocations and believed that such a resonance occurred due to envy: people could not understand how a 22-year-old author acquired fame and universal recognition in the blink of an eye. Journalist and playwright Joseph Gerasimov pointed out that Serafimovich knew that “Quiet Don” did not belong to Sholokhov, but did not want to add fuel to the fire. Sholokhov scholar Konstantin Priyma was sure that in fact stopping the publication of the third volume was beneficial to Trotsky’s associates: the people should not have known about the real events that took place in Veshenskaya in 1919.

It is noteworthy that the eminent Russian publicist has no doubt that the true author of “Quiet Don” is Mikhail Sholokhov. Dmitry Lvovich believes that the technique underlying the novel is very primitive: the plot revolves around the confrontation between the Reds and the Whites and the protagonist’s tossing between his wife and his mistress.

“A very simple, absolutely constructive children's scheme. When he writes the life of the nobility, it is clear that he does not know it absolutely... When, therefore, dying, an officer on the battlefield bequeaths his wife to a friend, it is clear that he has shortchanged the French,” the literary critic said on the program “Visiting "

In the 1930-1950s, Sholokhov wrote another brilliant novel dedicated to the collectivization of peasants, “Virgin Soil Upturned.” War works were also popular, for example “The Fate of Man” and “They Fought for the Motherland.” Work on the latter was carried out in several stages: 1942-1944, 1949 and 1969. Shortly before his death, Sholokhov, like Gogol, burned his work. Therefore, the modern reader can only be content with individual chapters of the novel.

But Sholokhov had a very original story with the Nobel Prize. In 1958, he was nominated for the prestigious award for the seventh time. In the same year, members of the Writers' Union visited Sweden and learned that Sholokhov and other authors were being nominated along with Boris Leonidovich. In the Scandinavian country, there was an opinion that the prize should go to Pasternak, but in a telegram addressed to the Swedish ambassador, it was said that in the USSR the award to Mikhail Alexandrovich would be widely appreciated.

It was also said that it is high time for the Swedish public to understand that Boris Leonidovich is not popular among Soviet citizens and that his works are not worthy of any attention. It’s easy to explain: Pasternak was repeatedly harassed by the authorities. The prize awarded to him in 1958 added firewood. The author of Doctor Zhivago was forced to refuse the Nobel Prize. In 1965, Sholokhov also received laurels of honor. The writer did not bow to the Swedish king, who presented the award. This was explained by the character of Mikhail Alexandrovich: according to some rumors, such a gesture was made intentionally (Cossacks do not bow to anyone).

Personal life

Sholokhov married Maria Gromoslavskaya in 1924. However, he wooed Lydia, her sister. But the girls’ father, the village ataman P. Ya. Gromoslavsky (postman after the revolution), insisted that Mikhail Alexandrovich should offer his hand and heart to his eldest daughter. In 1926, the couple had a girl, Svetlana, and four years later, a boy, Alexander, was born.

It is known that during the war the writer served as a war correspondent. Received the First Class Patriotic War award and medals. By character, Mikhail Alexandrovich was similar to his heroes - courageous, honest and rebellious. They say that he was the only writer who was not afraid and could look the leader straight in the eyes.

Death

Shortly before his death (the cause was laryngeal cancer), the writer lived in the village of Veshenskaya, was engaged in writing very rarely, and in the 1960s he actually abandoned this craft. He loved to walk in the fresh air and was fond of hunting and fishing. The author of "Quiet Flows the Don" literally gave away his prizes to society. For example, the Nobel Prize “went” to build a school.

The great writer Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov died in 1984. Sholokhov's grave is not in the cemetery, but in the courtyard of the house in which he lived. An asteroid was named in honor of the master of the pen, documentaries were made and monuments were erected in many cities.

Bibliography

• "Don Stories" (1925);
• "Azure Steppe" (1926);
• "Quiet Don" (1928–1940);
• “Virgin Soil Upturned” (1932, 1959);
• “They Fought for the Motherland” (1942–1949);
• "The Science of Hate" (1942);
• “The Word about the Motherland” (1948);
• "Man's Fate" (1956)

The Nobel Prize to Mikhail Sholokhov in 1965 is one of the most discussed decisions of the Swedish Academy. Almost immediately after the announcement of the laureate, academicians were accused of acting in accordance with the political situation, but data from the archives of the Swedish Academy indicates the opposite. Meduza editor Alexander Polivanov visited the Swedish Academy, looked through the newly opened archive of the 1965 Nobel Prize and came to the conclusion: the Nobel Committee could hardly have awarded the prize to anyone other than Sholokhov, even based on simple procedural considerations.

Mikhail Sholokhov reads his Nobel speech, 1965. Photo: Sinitsyn / Sputnik / Scanpix

“[The Nobel Prize was awarded] to the one who wrote the best Russian historical novel after “War and Peace” […] and the best love story after “Anna Karenina”; to the one who best described folk life after Gorky and to the one who now occupies a place among the world classics,” wrote the Swedish academic Karl Ragnar Gierov in a column for Svenska Dagbladet immediately after the Nobel laureates for 1965 were announced. Not everyone agreed with him. “The Swedish Academy is parodying itself. […] How could this happen: the novel “Quiet Don” was written 25 years ago, and the Nobel Prize was awarded for it! […] Sholokhov wrote “Quiet Don” at the age of 35. Günter Grass - if we take a modern author - is now 38. Naturally, he will not receive the Nobel Prize now, since he is too young. But in 1985, in 1990 - if you follow the Academy’s method - he will receive it, even if he doesn’t write a single line for 25 years,” journalist Boo Strömstedt quipped in Expressen (Grass received the Nobel Prize in 1999).

“The Swedish Academy awarded the Nobel Prize to Sholokhov for political rather than literary reasons. With the same success, the prize could have simply been given by the Central Committee of the CPSU,” noted journalist Olof Lagerkrantz in the newspaper Dagens Nyheter. Who was right? The names of those who were discussed by Swedish academics when awarding the Nobel Prize in Literature have been kept secret for 50 years, and for good reason: being included or not included in the shortlists can greatly affect the reputation of writers. And in general, it is better to learn about some of the tricks authors use to get among the laureates after their death. “Joseph told me that he and Milosz, who won the prize in 1980, nominated each other for it every year,” his publisher and close friend Ellendea Proffer writes in a recently published memoir about Joseph Brodsky.

In 2016, the Swedish Academy, without waiting for requests from journalists, published a list of nominees for the 1965 award on its website. It contains 90 names, including some very interesting ones. However, the most curious thing - the motivations of the academicians, why this or that writer is worthy of the Nobel Prize - remained in the archive in non-digitized form. Meanwhile, this is a unique read for fans of “writer ratings”. For example, the candidacy of the Italian Alberto Moravia was discussed by Swedish academicians quite carefully, but they scolded him for “erotomania” and in the end they were not included in the shortlist. But another Italian is Giovanni Guareschi; Academicians considered his work to not meet the “high demands of art.” Some writers remain on the longlist because academics simply do not have translations by which to judge the candidate's worth.

Finally, there are those whose work was analyzed in detail in previous years, and academicians decided that it did not deserve a Nobel Prize. Among such writers in 1965 were Friedrich Dürrenmath, Max Frisch, Somerset Maugham and Vladimir Nabokov. The latter was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1964. Then the Nobel Committee in its internal documents called “Lolita” an “immoral novel” that “can hardly be considered from the point of view of awarding the Nobel Prize.” In 1965, academicians even dedicated a couple of words to Nabokov - “refused earlier.” Most likely, this wording migrated from report to report until 1977, when Nabokov died. In addition to the authors of Lolita and Quiet Flows, Russian-language literature was represented on the long list for the 1965 Nobel Prize by Anna Akhmatova and Konstantin Paustovsky. Both writers were among the potential laureates for the first time, but if Paustovsky was eliminated at the long list stage (although academics compared his “Tale of Life” with Gorky’s legacy), then Akhmatova “reached the finals.”

Moreover, academicians discussed the paradoxical idea of ​​dividing the prize between Anna Akhmatova and Mikhail Sholokhov. Apparently, they were stopped by the words of Professor Anders Oesterling, long-time executive secretary of the Academy: “Awarding the prize to Anna Akhmatova and Mikhail Sholokhov can be explained by the fact that they write in the same language; they have nothing more in common.” At the same time, Oesterling emphasizes that Akhmatova can qualify for the prize alone. According to him, which is recorded in the report, Oesterling read Akhmatova in translations and was struck by the “genuine inspiration” of her poetry. It is quite possible that her candidacy would have been considered later, but Akhmatova died in 1966. According to the rules of the Swedish Academy, the Nobel Prize can only be awarded to living writers.

Excluding Anna Akhmatova, the Academy's 1965 shortlist included Shmuel Joseph Agnon and Nellie Sachs (shared the 1966 Nobel Prize), Miguel Asturias (1967 Nobel laureate), and W. H. Auden and Jorge Luis Borges (never received the Nobel Prize). The main contender for the prize in 1965 was Sholokhov. And that's why. Until 1965, Mikhail Sholokhov was nominated for the award 12 times: in 1947-1950, 1955-1956, 1958, and also in 1961-1965. This alone indicates that academicians carefully considered the candidacy of the Soviet writer, but not only this. Suffice it to say that in 1948 he was nominated by the Nobel Committee itself, and a year before, at the request of the Swedish Academy, literary critic Anton Karlgren wrote a 136-page (!) report on the author of “Quiet Don” - it is still stored in the “Sholokhov case” " in the Nobel archive.

From the mid-1950s, the Soviet government became involved in the fight for the prize for Sholokhov (before that, the Writers' Union and the USSR Academy of Sciences did not nominate their candidates for the “Western” prize). It is known that Soviet officials perceived Sholokhov as an alternative to Boris Pasternak and did their best to convince academicians that Sholokhov should receive the “Soviet” Nobel Prize. The award of the prize to Pasternak in 1958 was perceived in the USSR almost as a foreign policy defeat. In the 1960s, Sholokhov was nominated for the Nobel Prize not only by Soviet organizations. For example, in 1965, applications came from the USSR Academy of Sciences and the Gorky Institute of World Literature, but also from the universities of Lyon and London. And if the Soviet applications also looked somewhat comical (the USSR Academy of Sciences, justifying its choice, wrote that Sholokhov visited “many countries during his career: Poland, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, France, England and the USA” - as if forgetting that for the Western reader there is no merit in the very fact of travel), then the papers from the others turned out to be completely academic.

Of course, the 1964 Nobel laureate Jean-Paul Sartre also influenced the decision of the Swedish Academy. As is known, he refused the prize, including due to the fact that the Nobel Committee ignores Soviet literature and Sholokhov in particular. Sartre did not know that in 1964 the names of the authors of Nausea and Quiet Flows of the Flow were not only together on the Nobel Academy shortlist, but were right next to each other. Already in 1964, Sholokhov was considered the main contender for the prize after Sartre - and it is logical that in 1965 he became the favorite. Sholokhov's works were well known to academicians. Quiet Don was translated into Swedish many years ago (and, say, Doctor Zhivago was published in Swedish after Pasternak was given the Nobel Prize). It is characteristic that in 1964 academicians ordered another study of Sholokhov’s work - it did not concern general information about the writer, but a very specific thing - the differences in the editions of “Quiet Don”. This proves that they were well aware of Sholokhov (the research was carried out by Nils-Åke Nilsson, the same scientist who informed Pasternak in 1958 that his candidacy was being considered by academics).

In fact, the Swedish Academy had only one reason not to give the prize to Sholokhov - that he had not written anything new for a long time. This is a serious argument for the committee - several candidates from the long list did not make it onto the short list precisely because they did not create new works. For example, this is precisely what academicians motivated in 1965 for refusing to consider the candidacy of Andre Malraux. The seriousness of this problem is also evidenced by the fact that Esterling mentions it in the report on the decision of the academicians, insisting, however, that “Quiet Don” does not lose its relevance. In part, the Swedish Academy had to be convinced of the relevance of the author of “Quiet Don” by applications from the USSR. They emphasize that Sholokhov is a modern writer - in 1956 he completed “The Fate of Man”, in 1959 - “Virgin Soil Upturned”, in 1960 - he received the Lenin Prize. “Mikhail Sholokhov takes an active part in the social and political life of our country,” write Soviet academicians, trying to update Sholokhov’s name in the eyes of the Swedes.

Apparently, they succeeded: the 1965 Nobel laureate was chosen unanimously. “I would like my books to help people become better people, to become purer in soul, to awaken love for man, the desire to actively fight for the ideals of humanism and the progress of mankind,” said Mikhail Sholokhov in his Nobel speech. Alas, just a few months later, the Nobel laureate began to say completely different things: at the XXIII Congress of the CPSU, held in the spring of 1966, he regretted that this was not the 1920s, and the writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel could not be shot. Sholokhov preferred solidarity with the party to the “ideals of humanism.” How academicians in Sweden reacted to this is unknown, but five years later they awarded the Nobel Prize to another Soviet writer, Alexander Solzhenitsyn. It is known for certain that until 1965 Solzhenitsyn was not among the nominees for the prize, which means that the decision in 1970 was largely spontaneous. How exactly it was adopted will become clear in January 2021, when the Swedish Academy opens the archive for 1970.

Mikhail Sholokhov was born on May 11 (24), 1905 in the Kruzhilin farmstead (now Rostov region) in the family of an employee of a trading enterprise.

The first education in Sholokhov’s biography was received in Moscow during the First World War. Then he studied at a gymnasium in the Voronezh province in the city of Boguchar. Having arrived in Moscow to continue his education and not being admitted, he was forced to change many working specialties in order to feed himself. At the same time, in the life of Mikhail Sholokhov there was always time for self-education.

The beginning of a literary journey

His works were first published in 1923. Creativity has always played an important role in Sholokhov’s life. After publishing feuilletons in newspapers, the writer publishes his stories in magazines. In 1924, the newspaper “Young Leninist” published the first of Sholokhov’s series of Don stories, “The Birthmark.” Later, all the stories from this cycle were combined into three collections: “Don Stories” (1926), “Azure Steppe” (1926) and “About Kolchak, Nettles and Others” (1927).

Creativity flourishes

Sholokhov became widely famous for his work about the Don Cossacks during the war - the novel “Quiet Don” (1928-1932).

Over time, this epic became popular not only in the USSR, but also in Europe and Asia, and was translated into many languages.

Another famous novel by M. Sholokhov is “Virgin Soil Upturned” (1932-1959). This novel about the times of collectivization in two volumes received the Lenin Prize in 1960.

From 1941 to 1945, Sholokhov worked as a war correspondent. During this time, he wrote and published several stories and essays (“The Science of Hate” (1942), “On the Don”, “Cossacks” and others).
Sholokhov’s famous works are also: the story “The Fate of a Man” (1956), the unfinished novel “They Fought for the Motherland” (1942-1944, 1949, 1969).

It is worth noting that an important event in the biography of Mikhail Sholokhov in 1965 was the receipt of the Nobel Prize in Literature for the epic novel “Quiet Don”.

last years of life

Since the 60s, Sholokhov practically stopped studying literature and loved to devote time to hunting and fishing. He donated all his awards to charity (the construction of new schools).
The writer died on February 21, 1984 from cancer and was buried in the courtyard of his house in the village of Veshenskaya on the banks of the Don River.

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