presents 107 YEARS OF SHOLOKHOV A celebration held in honor of M.A. Sholokhov's 107th Birthday 24 May 2012.

Biography of Mikhail Sholokov. A cradle-to-grave summary of the writer's life.

"Birthmark" (1924) Sholokhov's very first short story, about the clash of a young Red commander and the wizened old leader of an anti-Soviet band of maurauding Cossack brigands. The complete text in English.

Speech of Mikhail Sholokhov to 2nd Congress of Soviet Writers (1954) Author of Quiet Don attacks lazy writers and gutless critics! "High Priests" Ehrenburg and Simonov criticized! Literary prize system condemned!

"Fate of a Man" (1957) Detailed summary of Sholokhov's tale about a Soviet soldier who is captured by the Nazis during the war. He loses his entire family and his will to live. After the war he slips into drunkenness and depression until a young boy gives him a new reason for living.

Speech to the 20th Congress of The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1956) Text of Sholokhov's speech to the de-Stalinizing 20th Party Congress. He blasts Soviet writers, calling most of them "dead souls".

About Little Boy Harry and Big Mister Salisbury (1960) An article in which Sholokov attacks American journalist Harrison Salisbury for the meanness and stupidity of his articles on Sholovkhov's Virgin Soil Upturned. Sholokhov accuses Salisbury of metaphoric murder and urges that he be publicly flogged.

Sholokhov Slams Solzhenitsyn! (1967) In a letter to the Union of Writers, Sholokhov demands that dissident writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn be excluded from the Union. The reason: Solzhenitsyn is either insane or a dangerous anti-Soviet; either way, says Sholokhov, "the man cannot be trusted with a pen." Further, Sholokhov calls Solzhenitsyn's writing "feeble and foolish" and lumps him in with the Vlasovites, those Soviets who betrayed their motherland and joined the Nazis to fight against the USSR during the Great Patriotic War.

Introducing Sholokhov by Aleksandr Serafimovich. The short introduction to Tales of the Don (1926), Sholokhov's first collection of stories, written by veteran Soviet-Cossack writer A. Serafimovich. "Comrade Sholokhov's stories stand out like a steppeland flower."

About Sholokhov by Konstantin Fedin. "He has never side-stepped the contradictions inherent in life....Sholokhov omits nothing, he writes the whole truth."

M.A. Sholokhov by C.P. Snow. "The Quiet Don is a great novel...but a mysterious and difficult one. It speaks of the bafflement of ordinary men...but under the surface there is a subjective, passionate sense of life. A tragic sense of life."

An Artist Who Has Enriched The World by Yuri Bondarev. "Sholokhov never follows a straight corridor carpeted with comfortable truths. On the contrary, his target is the all-absorbing truth that is won through struggle and suffering, a truth that is rugged and unkempt and baptized in blood."

The Making of "The Fate of a Soldier" by Vladimir Monakhov.. Sholokhov gives advice to filmmakers on adapting his story for the screen. "If you want to make a film out of my story...make it a bit on the boring side."

A Sholokhov Photo Gallery. Photos from the life of Mikhail Sholokhov. Includes some embarrassing baby pictures.

Return to: SovLit.net