Lev Yakimenko is a popular Soviet literary critic, and the author of well-known books about Nobel Prize winner Mikhail Sholokhov.
In the present book, Lev Yakimen-- ko gives a profound and comprehensive analysis of all Sholokhov's work, from his early Tales front the Don to his last, as yet unfinished novel They Fought for Their Fatherland. He focuses bis main attention oa the author's two major novels And QtUet flows the Don and Virgin Soil Upturned, which are very well known to readers abroad.
The principal (Nations of the aesthetics of socialist realism, such as creative method, tradition and innovation, the theory of genres (short-- story, novel, epic novel), the meaning of the writer's aesthetic and social ideal, are thoroughly examined. Lev Yakimenko also gives a detailed account of Sholokhov's career, dwelling on little-known pages from his life-story, and admirably achieves what he has set out to do---to show this great writer in all his uniqueness and originality.
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IAKIHENKO LEV GRIGOREVICH
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[BEGIN] __AUTHOR__ L. YAKIMENKO __TITLE__ Sholokhov: A CRITICAL APPRECIATION __TEXTFILE_BORN__ 2007-04-09T03:54:31-0700 __TRANSMARKUP__ "Y. Sverdlov"PROGRESS PURLISHERS
MOSCOW
[1]Translated from the Russian by Bryan bean
Designed by Yuri Samsonov
Jlee HKHMCHKO
TBOP^lECTBO MHXAHJIA fflOJIOXOBA Ha
__COPYRIGHT__ First printing 1973Sholokhov on: Literature and Life: Creative Writing; Literary Criticism.
[3] ~ [4] __ALPHA_LVL1__ INTRODUCTIONLow I bow, and as a son I kiss your fresh earth, Cossack steppeland of the Don, soaked with blood that will not rust.
When I think of Sholokhov, two pictures spring to mind, so different it is hard to believe that they are of one and the same person. They are separated by many years, years of dramatic historic events.
Sholokhov is standing in an unbuttoned sheepskin coat, a fur hat casually tilted at an angle so that it partly covers his high forehead, merry eyes smiling from a thin, youthful face. The nineteen-year-old boy has just had his first stories published. After receiving one of his first author's fees from Komsomoliya, a youth magazine, he has run gaily out into the yard with some friends and there someone has snapped them for a souvenir of the occasion. In spite of his youth he already has a wealth of experience behind him: in those years young people became independent very early in life. He fought in the Civil War, occupied the post of supplies commissar, pursued White bands, and had been taken prisoner by them. Now he has come to Moscow from his native Don region, intending to study and vaguely dreaming of becoming a writer, and it looks as though his dream is beginning to come true.
``One day in April a stocky young fellow came into the office, wearing an Astrakhan fur hat which was much the worse for wear and a shabby coat thrown wide open,'' Ivan Molchanov, then secretary of the Komsomoliya editorial office, recalls. ``He took a manuscript from a side pocket and placed it on the table. It was entitled Melon Field Keeper and was signed by a completely unknown writer 'M. Sholokhov'. Alexander Zharov and I read the manuscript and immediately sent it to the printshop. Those were hungry days. I insisted that the authors 5 of the first number, which had not yet come out, should be paid something in advance. The next day I wrote out the first payment slip for Sholokhov.''^^*^^
Then I see him many, many years later. Grey-haired, with wrinkles round his eyes, wearing a smart dress-coat, Sholokhov stands stiff and proud, a look of almost stern arrogance on his face, receiving the Nobel Prize from the King of Sweden.
More than forty years had passed since the first photograph was taken, forty years entirely devoted to literature.
Sholokhov wrote his first stories in 1923. Later, in 1926, they were collected in the book Tales from the Don. He began work on And Quiet Flows the Don in 1925 when he was twenty. The first book of Virgin Soil Upturned appeared in 1932. He was a war correspondent during the war, writing articles and stories. He began the novel They Fought for Their Fatherland. The end of 1956 saw the publication of his short story The Fate of a Man. In 1959 he finished the second book of Virgin Soil Upturned. The appearance of each of Sholokhov's books was in itself a great event. But, as is the case with all truly great works, it was an important event too for the reader when he discovered them for himself.
Sholokhov is one of those writers who prefer not to talk about the actual process of writing. Yet from what he has said here and there over the years, we can gain a pretty clear idea of the motive forces underlying his art.
The motive force at work in his writings is of course his love for his native region. He lives today in his beloved Don country where he spent his childhood, and where his youth passed in the turmoil of the Civil War. Veshenskaya village is as inseparably linked with Sholokhov as Yasnaya Polyana with Tolstoi.
Love for his native region means above all love for the people he has lived among: the farmers and soldiers, hunters and fishermen. ``I wanted to write about the people I was born among and whom I knew,''^^**^^ he was to say, looking back over his work on And Quiet Flows the Don.
_-_-_^^*^^ Literatura I zhizn, May 23, 1958.
^^**^^ Izvestia, June 12, 1940.
6The life of the people represents an inexhaustible source of material for Sholokhov. He cannot conceive his work without constant contact with the people who later stride across the pages of his novels.
Sholokhov maintains this contact when he is writing, when he rides to a field-camp and talks to the tractordrivers round the campfire, or when merely chatting to an acquaintance he has bumped into in the street.
``During almost thirty years as a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. I never once felt my duties to be a burden. On the contrary, I have got a tremendous amount out of the contacts my work involves,'' Sholokhov said at a meeting with voters in June 1966. Meeting new people and getting to know their lives, their joys and sorrows means live material for the artist. If the writer shuts himself up in an ivory tower, he can never hope to acquire that wealth of experience which daily contacts with other people can bring him.
The first book of Virgin Soil Upturned serves as a perfect illustration of this, for the whole book was the result of Sholokhov's direct participation in collectivisation, was in fact an answer to many of the difficult questions that arose during the revolutionary transformation of life in the countryside.
Sholokhov's speech in Stockholm after receiving the Nobel Prize in December 1965 seems to sum up the writer's views on art very neatly. Throughout his fifty years of activity as a writer, Sholokhov has never ceased to believe that art's noble purpose is to exert a salutary influence on mankind.
``To speak honestly to the reader, to tell people the truth, however bitter, to strengthen in the hearts of men their faith in the future and in their own power to create that future; to be an active fighter for peace throughout the world, and foster by one's writings other such fighters; to unite people in their natural and noble yearning for progress. The arts have a tremendous power over men's minds and hearts. I think a person has the right to call himself an artist if he directs this power to creating beauty in men's souls for the good of mankind.''
Sholokhov draws his strength from reality---reality in its historical aspect, reality in its development, the reality of everyday life. His heroes move in the concrete, 7 material world of things. They are reality itself, created with that precision of characterisation which gives each of them a unique, inimitable life of his own.
I am moved to stress this by the arguments which have flared up about realism. Sholokhov's works represent one of the most weighty and convincing answers to the question of the essence of realism in our age.
I approach the problems raised in these arguments as follows: has reality been exhausted as the only object of artistic apprehension, that is, reality explored for the purpose of obtaining the maximum objectivity, or does this objective approach to the picture of life and characters, this attempt to recreate the world of things in the world of art, no longer satisfy our perception of things, our aesthetic tastes and demands?
Are we to have reality as such, in all its hardness and complexity, or the reality of myth, reality distorted through the prism of purely individual, absolutely subjective perception, where the writer's ego serves as the model of the world?
Is it in fact essential that we make such a choice, or can various trends exist side by side in contemporary art? If so, we ought perhaps to examine and define the real potentialities inherent in these different trends.
Realism obviously presupposes a definite relationship between the artist and the world he lives in.
``I am one of those writers who see in unlimited opportunity to serve the working people with their pen the greatest honour and the greatest freedom.
``This is the source of everything, that is how I see 'he writer's, the Soviet writer's place in the world today.'' These are Sholokhov's words from his address in Stockholm.
Sholokhov the writer lives in a colourful world, the authenticity of which is confirmed by every line of his books. This world exists as given reality, which requires understanding and explaining. Sholokhov is involved in human society, and has a strongly developed sense of responsibility not simply towards life and man in the abstract, but towards those people whose vital beliefs and hopes he shares. This recognition of historical community, of man's capabilities and personal responsibility is the basic essence underlying Sholokhov's epos. The 8 reality his works portray has its historical substantiation and social explanation.
Gorky apparently understood this. In 1932 he remarked in a conversation that ``sensible people throughout Europe accept Sholokhov's works as reality itself".
Sholokhov's heroes---this applies equally to Grigory Melekhov, Semyon Davidov, Makar Nagulnov or Andrei Sokolov---not only exist in time but actually express the age they live in, living its hopes and quests, its joys and sorrows.
Sholokhov focusses his attention on apprehending the complex relationship between the individual and society, between personal urges and the character of the age. Through the arts man apprehends himself and the nature of the relationship between the individual and society, between man and Nature.
Art helps mankind put its great ideals into practice. Art which is imbued with the ideals of rejuvenating life is a source of inspiration, strengthening man's faith and hopes.
But art can only be so genuinely humanistic on condition that it has its roots in the people. In Stockholm Sholokhov spoke proudly, forcefully and ardently about what has always been and always will be the aim of his whole life.
``The historical path along which my people have advanced was no beaten track. They have gone forward as explorers, as pioneers of life. My aim as a writer has always been to pay tribute in all my works to this nation of toilers, builders and heroes, who have never attacked anyone, but have always known how to defend what they have created, to defend their freedom and honour, their right to build their future in the way they themselves have chosen.
``I would like my books to help make people better and purer in heart, to arouse love for man, and the desire to take an active part in the struggle for the ideals of humanism and the progress of mankind. If I have been at all successful then I consider myself a happy man.''
Sholokhov's name already takes its place alongside such world-famous Russian writers as Gogol, Tolstoi, Dostoyevsky and Chekhov. ``He is the most popular Russian writer in the West since Chekhov,'' wrote the 9 well-known English writer and scholar C. P. Snow. ``In England and America he is read far more than any of his younger contemporaries. You can now see paper-back editions of his works in any London book-store. I consider, as do many of my friends, that And Quiet Flows the Don is the finest book to have appeared anywhere in the last forty years.''^^*^^
Ernest Hemingway said: ``I am very fond of Russian literature. I owe a lot to its influence, to Pushkin, Lermontov, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoi, and of course Gogol's Taras Bulba. Of the modern writers Sholokhov is my favourite.''^^**^^
One could cite numerous examples of remarks by famous writers, artists, scholars---and indeed readers from every walk of life---which witness growing interest all over the world in the works of Mikhail Sholokhov.
We find ourselves turning again and again to Sholokhov, to his experience, his knowledge and his works. It is over thirty years since he completed And Quiet Flows the Don, and more than thirty-five since the publication of Virgin Soil Upturned. Arrested in its flight by Sholokhov's mighty hand, the past lives in his books not only as a time that is over and done with, but (and this is the mark of truly great art) in relation to the present. It clarifies the present, and helps us draw up our future aims, moving us to think, argue and search.
_-_-_^^*^^ Don No. 5, 1965.
^^**^^ Izvestia, March 19, 1960.
[10] __NOTE__ LVL1's moved forward. [11] ~ [12] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ I``The soft breath of the sun-warmed black earth could not stifle the finer perfume of the fading steppe violets. They grew on a stretch of abandoned fallow, popping up among the dry stalks of hart's-clover, spreading in a colourful pattern over the edges of an old field balk; and even on the flintily hard virgin soil their blue, childishly clear eyes looked out on the world from the withered grass of the previous year. The violets had lived their appointed time in this lonely and spacious steppe, and in their place, on the slope of the ravine, marvellously brilliant tulips were already rising, lifting their crimson, white, and yellow chalices to the sun, while the wind blended the varied perfumes of the flowers and carried them far over the steppe" (4, 641--642).^^*^^
Just such images of the faraway Don steppes must have sprung to the young Sholokhov's mind when he was working on his first stories in Moscow. The title he gave to his collected early short stories, The Azure Steppe, was most appropriate. On the Don they call the tulip the ``azure flower''. It was a simple image that conjured up his beloved, unforgettable native Don region.
``I wanted to write about the people I was born among and whom I knew,'' he was later to say.
These words do not only apply to And Quiet Flows the Don. All Sholokhov's works are deeply rooted in the soil of his native Don region.
Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov was born on Kruzhilino farmstead, Veshenskaya village, on May 24, 1905.
``I was born and bred on the Don. It was there that I was formed as a man and a writer, and was educated _-_-_
^^*^^ All quotations are given according to: M. Sholokhov, And Quiet Flows the Don, Books 1-4, Moscow, 1967.
13 as a member of our great Communist Party. I am a patriot of my great, mighty country, and I am also proud to declare myself a patriot of my native Don region.'' Sholokhov spoke these words at a meeting with voters in 1937.^^*^^Sholokhov's mother, Anastasia Danilovna Chernikova, came from a peasant family.
``I knew and loved the writer's mother well,'' A. Plotkin, who worked in Veshenskaya region at the time of the collectivisation, wrote in his memoirs. ``She was a simple, modest old lady... always busy with something or other.... She was quiet and inconspicuous but very friendly. She always had a greeting and a kind word for everyone.''
A. S. Serafimovich, a prominent Soviet writer, who stayed with Sholokhov at Veshenskaya, wrote: ``His mother is a wonderful person, completely illiterate but with a strong, lively, penetrating mind. In order to be able to write to her son she set to and taught herself to read and write. There followed a happy correspondence between mother and son. Obviously he inherited from her the precious creative gift that made him a great writer.''^^**^^ She died during an air raid in 1942, when the nazis bombed the village of Veshenskaya.
His father, Alexander Mikhailovich Sholokhov, came from Ryazan gubernia. His son describes how he ``sowed corn on bought Cossack land, served as a farm bailiff, as manager of a steam-mill and so on''. He died in 1926.
Young Mikhail went to the parish school first. ``Without finishing the school in Karginovo, I enrolled in a preparatory class at a Moscow lycee.... I studied for two or three years in Moscow, then continued at the Boguchary lycee. In 1918, I attended school here in Veshenskaya for a few months. In all I managed to complete four forms of high school.''^^***^^
When the Civil War broke out Sholokhov exchanged his high-school studies for education in the hard school of life, in the fierce dramatic class struggle on the Don.
_-_-_^^*^^ Artists and Men of Letters Who Are Deputies to the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.Ii., Russ. ed., Moscow, 1938, p. 40.
^^**^^ A. Serafimovich, Collected Works, Russ. ed., Vol. 10, Moscow, 1948, p. 364.
^^***^^ F. Abramov, V. Gura, M. A. Sholokhov, Seminaries, Russ. ed., Leningrad, 1958, p. 132.
14The fifteen-year-old boy joined a food supply detachment. At that time these detachments had to wage a stubborn struggle against the kulaks, who, relying on the support of armed bands, were hiding their crops in an effort to starve out the young Soviet Republic. ``From 1920 I had a long period of service in a food detachment, travelling all over the Don region,'' Sholokhov wrote in his autobiography. ``I chased White bands, who were in control of the region up to 1922, and they were chasing us. Naturally it involved getting into all sorts of scrapes....''
Sholokhov's early works---Alien Blood, The Food Commissar, and especially Paths and Roads, show just what sort of ``scrapes'' a young commissar could get into in those years. There was the constant danger of being struck down by a kulak bullet fired from round a corner, or of a sudden bandit attack. K. Potapov tells how Sholokhov was taken prisoner in a battle with members of Makhno's band near Konkovo farmstead. He was ``interrogated by Makhno himself, and only escaped being shot because of his youth. Makhno promised him he would be hung should their paths ever cross again. The young Sholokhov took part in battles against Fomin's band, whom he was later to describe in And Quiet Flows the Don."^^*^^
Thus Sholokhov gained his early experience of the fierce, cruel class struggle on the Don, which provided so much of the subject-matter of his early stories and was to be expressed so powerfully in And Quiet Flows the Don.
The Civil War over, Sholokhov came to Moscow towards the end of 1922. What was it that prompted the seventeenyear-old youth to leave his home for the capital? Was he attracted by the recently opened workers' faculties? Or was it his dream of becoming a writer, the brave decision to launch out on that path that brought him hardwon happiness, world fame and the inevitable bitterness of many a hard blow?
In 1922 Sholokhov could hardly have imagined that his dream of becoming a writer might have any chance of coming true. When he arrived in Moscow the city was only just beginning to get over hunger and destruction, and _-_-_
^^*^^ K. Potapov's Afterword in: And Quiet Flows the Don, Russ. ed., Vol. 4, Moscow, 1953, p. 450.
15 the turmoil of the Revolution and the Civil War years. The NEP (New Economic Policy) period had just begun: privately owned restaurants and night clubs had opened, the ``champions of free enterprise" walked around in expensive overcoats, their women in furs, and profiteers sold French perfumes and silk stockings, while long queues of unemployed formed outside the labour exchanges. There were violent contrasts at every turn.Sholokhov's first impressions of this Moscow were reflected to some extent in his feuilleton ``Three'', published on October 30,1923, in the newspaper Yunosheskaya Pravda.
The young man had a hard time in Moscow at first. He had to find a job to support himself, so he went to the labour exchange. I. Eksler describes how the young Sholokhov applied for work: ``This young fellow in a tall grey sheepskin hat turned up at the labour exchange in Malaya Bronnaya Street. When asked his profession, he replied 'food commissar'.''^^*^^
But the period of war communism was over and food commissars were no longer required. Sholokhov went to work as a loader, a navvy, a clerk and so on.
At the same time he began to write for a youth newspaper. His article ``Ordeal'' appeared in Yunosheskaya Pravda (then the official organ of the Komsomol Central Committee and Moscow Committee) on September 19, 1923, to be followed shortly after by ``Three'', and later ``The Inspector'', published at the beginning of 1924. Sholokhov's first attempts as a writer are of scarce literary importance in themselves and consequently do not appear in the writer's collected works. Yet even so, there were passages which testified to the young man's talent and fine powers of observation.
Sholokhov's career as a writer can be said to begin properly on December 14, 1924, with the publication of his story The Birth-Mark in Molodoi Leninets. The many stories later to be gathered together in the collections Tales from the Don and The Azure Steppe began to appear separately on the pages of various newspapers and magazines (including Komsomoliya, Prozhektor, Smena, and Ogonyok).
_-_-_^^*^^ Izvestia, Juno 12, 1940.
16The collection Tales from the Don, published by the Novaya Moskva Publishing House in Moscow in 1926, carried a foreword by A. S. Serafimovich.
Serafimovich became Sholokhov's ``literary godfather''. Moreover, the two struck up a firm and lasting friendship. The older writer took a direct interest in the first book of And Quiet Flows the Don, and when it was published was the first to congratulate the young writer on his success in an article in Pravda, which extolled Sholokhov's talent and contained many penetrating observations about his work.
Sholokhov was all the more grateful for the support of such an experienced writer in that on the whole he received very little attention from his fellow writers at this stage.
In an article for Serafimovich's seventy-fifth birthday in 1938 Sholokhov wrote: ``I am truly obliged to Serafimovich, for it was he who first supported me at the very beginning of my literary career, who first recognised and encouraged me.... I will never forget how in 1925, on reading my first collection of stories, Serafimovich wrote an enthusiastic foreword, and even wanted to meet me. Our first meeting took place at the First House of Soviets. Serafimovich assured me that I must continue to write and study. He told me to work very carefully on everything, and never to hurry. I have always endeavoured to follow this advice.''^^*^^
Sholokhov began his career as a writer at a very significant moment in Soviet literature. A whole stream of young people were returning from the Civil War and entering the literary scene. They produced a flood of works that gave the new Soviet literature a fine reputation.
The representatives of the generation that had borne all the hardships of the Civil War on their shoulders were turning to literature still in their military greatcoats so to speak, and bringing to it ``the whiff of grapeshot" they _-_-_
^^*^^ M. Sliolokhov, Collected Works in eight volumes, Russ. cd., Vol. 8, Moscow, 1960, pp. 128--29.
17 had themselves experienced, the thunder of recent battles. Together they were creating a great epic of the October Revolution and the Civil War.At the end of the twenties books by Soviet writers (Chapayev, The Iron Flood, Cities and Years, The Rout, The Badgers, the first books of And Quiet Flows theDon, and so on) began to appear in translation abroad, where they had a strange attraction even for the bourgeois reader.
This was of course not due to startlingly new literary devices, which were the basis of so many fashionable modernist trends. Nor was it due to the exceptional biographies of the writers, who were for the most part very young, although there was obviously a certain glamour in the idea of fame having come to a twenty-- fouryear-old youth who had taken part in the Civil War on the Don (Sholokhov), and a twenty-eight-year-old man who had fought as a partisan in the Far East (Fadeyev). But the main factor which accounted for their immense popularity was the books themselves, the life which they described.
They opened wide the door on the ``mysterious'' world of revolutionary Russia, with its battles that decided the fate of whole nations and states, the heroic deeds of the masses, the proud awareness of the importance of the victories gained, the unprecedented hardships, hunger and destruction, the bitter dramas and tragedies, inevitable in the great revolutionary upheaval which ushered in a new stage in the history of the world.
``When I was young and just setting out to become a writer---that is at the end of the twenties,'' wrote the Dutch writer Theun de Vries, ``a German publishing house put out, apparently for the first time in Western Europe, a series which struck our imagination and our hearts. They were stories and novels by young Soviet writers who were themselves among the ranks of the revolutionary people and showed the world that race of new, strong fighters, who were sometimes rough but always healthy---the fighters and builders of socialism. There were the novels of Fedin, Gladkov, Fadeyev, Leonov, and Sholokhov. Ever since I have been very much under the influence of this new literature. It helped me form my own views on man and society. It forced me to 18 recognise those social forces of which I had had only a very vague idea previously.''^^*^^
Indeed, if we turn to the period in our literature Theun de Vries is referring to, we will find two words on the literary banners of the time: ``Revolution and Man.'' The efforts of a whole generation of Soviet writers were turned towards understanding and interpreting the Revolution and the place in it and the attitude towards it of people of the most varied backgrounds.
``The war and the Revolution were our most important emotional experience. The single aim of our lives was to express this experience in art,'' Fedin wrote years later.^^**^^
The exceptional nature of the historical process underway, the simple fact that for the first time in history the masses were reorganising life in their own interests, was in itself enough to stimulate writers to conduct a ceaseless search for new methods. For if it were to remain faithful to life and ``read the book of life" correctly, literature had to find new methods, new principles for creating works on a level with the age. The writers who nursed the new literature through its infancy had only recently been soldiers, and they were very bold in their thinking. For them literature was more than a vehicle for self-- expression. They saw their high calling in terms of service to the people. It is clear from numerous statements made on the subject that they aimed to create a heroic literature, worthy of the people who had made the Revolution.
At a meeting in Paris in April 1949, Alexander Fadeyev said: ``When the Civil War came to an end and we began to congregate from every corner of our vast country--- young Party men, and even more non-Party men---we were amazed to find how similar the paths we had traversed were despite our very different circumstances. This went for Furmanov, the author of Chapayev, and for the young Mikhail Sholokhov, who was possibly the most gifted of us---We came into literature wave upon wave, bringing our personal experience and our individuality. We were united by a sense of the new world being our own, and by our love for it.''^^***^^
_-_-_^^*^^ Inostrannaya Literatura No. 11, 1956, pp. 182--83.
^^**^^ K. Fedin, Gorky Among Us, Russ. cd., Moscow, 1943, p. 124.
^^***^^ A. Fadeyev, Thirty Years, Russ. ed., Moscow, 1957, pp. 459--60.
__PRINTERS_P_20_COMMENT__ 2* 19This sense of the world he lived in and wrote about being his own, and love for it, permeates all Sholokhov's early writings and indeed all his later works too.
Almost all the Tales from the Don are based on Sholokhov's personal experience in the establishment of Soviet power on the Don.
Tales from the Don were almost lost to the general public. The book was reprinted in 1931 in a very small edition (5,500 copies), and twenty-five years were to elapse before they were published again. Sholokhov himself was largely responsible for this. He considered them to be of scant literary value and was strongly opposed to their publication.
Now that the stories formerly gathered together under the titles Tales from the Don and The Azure Steppe have appeared in the first volume of the collected works of Sholokhov, the reader can see for himself how unjust the author was in judging them so severely. True, there are clumsy, rough passages, and some that jar somewhat. But the youthful freshness and the dramatic force of the conflicts and passions cannot fail to captivate the reader.
The young writer carefully examined the radical changes that the Revolution had wrought in the life of the Cossacks and tried to perceive the new features of life and people's characters.
At the same time Sholokhov's stories helped to dispel that false-romantic impression of revolutionary struggle, with ``heroes'' effortlessly overcoming their enemies, which was a feature of so many works written about the Civil War at that time. The writer showed the harsh reality of the fierce struggle that went on in the Cossack stanitsas both during the Civil War and in the first years of peace when Soviet power was being established on the Don. The Revolution affected the life of the people down to the very roots, dividing families and setting brother against brother, son against father. In The Birth-Mark the ataman of a White band kills his son who is in command of a Red Army cavalry troop. The Red Army man Shibalok kills the woman he loves when he learns that she has passed information to the Whites (Shibalok's Seed). Two brothers kill their father who had headed a drumhead court-martial which had sentenced Red Army prisoners to death (Melon Field Keeper). Kramskov, 20 a White officer, has his father and brother, who are fighting in the Red Guards, shot (Vortex).
Tales from the Don literally reeks of powder and blood, so fierce is the struggle the writer depicts.
Many of the features of Sholokhov's talent which he was later to develop more fully are already present in these early stories. Sholokhov transmits the drama of the class struggle through poignant situations, where friends and even kinsfolk find themselves on opposite sides of the fence, thus showing the Revolution as a social upheaval of colossal magnitude affecting every aspect of human relationships.
One of the epic themes of world literature of the past was expressed with particular poignancy in Tales from the Don. Sholokhov penetrated life's small backwaters, and carefully examined the relationship between man and property, and how this affected people's character and psychology. And from the very start we observe that powerful motif which was to run through all Sholokhov's works: his rejection of a world based on blind egoism, inequality, the power of money, and the laws of the jungle.
The stories often centre on a struggle between two radically opposed forces: the conflict between people of the emergent world of socialism and those who cling tenaciously to the past---the kulaks and the whiteguards. Sholokhov sees the actual struggle he is depicting so dramatically as an expression of the conflict between irreconcilable principles: humanism, and care for the welfare and happiness of the recently disinherited, on the one hand, and the savage tenacity of people who will stop at nothing to retain their privileges, wealth and possessions, on the other.
The characters of the people building Soviet power on the Don were formed in the crucible of ceaseless struggle with the class enemy, now latent, now exploding in a new fierce burst. The young author gave all his love and sympathy to these people. There is Yefim, a Red Army man and former shepherd, responsive to other people's griefs, mortal enemy of the kulaks ``whose day is done" (Mortal Enemy); Grigory, a young orphan, a herdsman, then a Komsomol member, who longs to study so as to be able to govern ``our republic" (The Herdsman); Petka 21 Kremnev, secretary of a Komsomol cell, who bravely takes upon himself all the most difficult and dangerous tasks (Paths and Roads); and the amiable Foma Korshunov (The Bastard).
For all their differences in age, character and experience, these people all have one thing in common: the Revolution has inspired them all to take part in building a new life.
In Tales from the Don Sholokhov gave a genuine, authentic account of the fierce class struggle which continued on the Don after the Civil War was over, an account that is imbued with confidence in the inevitable triumph of the new.
There are strong connecting links between Tales from the Don and Sholokhov's novels. Some of the stories are closer to And Quiet Flows the Don, others to Virgin Soil Upturned, but for all the difference in their literary worth they represent a good running start to a life of great creative achievement.
[22] __NOTE__ LVL1's moved forward. [23] ~ [24] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ II __ALPHA_LVL1__ And QuietIn 1925 Sholokhov left Moscow and returned to his native Don region. From that time forth his whole life was to be dedicated to writing.
In 1925 the twenty-year-old budding writer Mikhail Sholokhov took the firm decision to return home, there to write a big book about the Don.
The young writer looked upon his first book as a modest unsuccessful attempt to write about his native region. When he left Moscow for the Don Sholokhov was still unsure as to how he would cope with his plans.
Sholokhov was planning to write a novel about Cossack life. ``I began to write the novel in 1925,'' he was later to relate. ``But originally I had no intention of such a large-scale work. The idea of showing the role of the Cossacks in the Revolution appealed to me especially. I began with the part they played in Kornilov's march on Petrograd. There were Don Cossacks in the 3rd Cavalry Corps, which took part in the march.'' Such, in the author's own words, was his original plan for a novel about the life of the Don Cossacks.
Sholokhov wrote about four signatures of the novel, which was entitled The Don Epic. But he was not satisfied with what he had written. He felt that the reader was left in the dark as to why the great majority of the Cossacks took part in the struggle against the Revolution.
``Who are these Cossacks? What is this Don Cossack region? Is it not something of a terra incognita for the reader? Such considerations led me to drop the work I had begun. I began to think of a much more encompassing novel,'' Sholokhov wrote in 1937.~^^*^^
_-_-_^^*^^ Izuestia, December 31, 1937.
25From what Sholokhov says we see that he originally intended writing a novel about the role of the Don Cossacks in Kornilov's attempted coup, but that while working on it he realised that the events leading up to the October Revolution could not really be understood properly unless he turned to the past, especially pre-war life, and the First World War. Sholokhov strove to shed light on the historical role of the Don Cossacks, and this in turn made it necessary for him to widen his sights to take in the grandiose conflicts of the whole revolutionary epoch.
The next year Sholokhov began work on the first volume of the novel as we know it, which describes the life of the Cossacks in the pre-war and war years.
At that time Sholokhov evidently suffered moments of doubt which are so familiar to writers, even the greatest: a feeling of hopelessness, when awareness of the vastness and singularity of the task that lay before him coupled with a deep sense of responsibility and tremendous perfectionism seemed to crush him and paralyse him with the thought that his efforts were useless.
Yet Sholokhov was only twenty when he set out to write And Quiet Flows the Don. He had but two years of writing behind him and the thin book, with a foreword by Serafimovich, in which his first stories were collected had not yet come out. And here he was alone, in an out-of-the-way Don village, far from the main literary centres, where he could have relied on the friendly support and approval of more experienced writers.
In 1932, when he was already world famous as the author of the first volumes of And Quiet Flows the Don, Sholokhov described this period in his ``Autobiography'' written for the magazine Prozhektor: ``In the autumn of 1925 I set about writing And Quiet Flows the Don, but dropped it after three or four signatures. I felt it was beyond me.'' He went on: ``I originally began with 1917, with General Kornilov's march on Petrograd. A year later I came back to it, and than changed my mind and decided to show the life of the Cossacks before the war.''
The events described in volume one led up to the February Revolution, to the events in Petrograd and Kornilov's offensive. Naturally, in volume two Sholokhov used many passages from his first version.
26``I began with an account of Kornilov's offensive, what now forms the second volume of And Quiet Flows the Don" Sholokhov told I. Lezhnev. ``I had written some pretty good passages when it occurred to me that I had started off in the wrong place. I put the manuscript aside and started again, this time with the old days, with the life of the Cossacks before the war, which formed the first three parts, that is volume one, of And Quiet Flows the Don. When I had finished volume one and came to describe the events in Petrograd and Kornilov's offensive, I returned to my first manuscript and used it for volume two.''^^*^^
The story of how Sholokhov first tackled And Quiet Flows the Don, the direction in which his thoughts were turning, is in itself significant. It helps one understand that universal law of art, whereby the success of the artist is explained first and foremost by his ability to discover and reveal ``new worlds in life".
Of course it would be ridiculous to put this down merely to the fact that Sholokhov was the first in our literature to write of the Don region and the Don Cossacks on such a scale and with such understanding and sympathy. After all, a writer is not an ethnographer. We have seen how when the twenty-year-old writer set out so keenly to write his novel in 1925, he was still a long way from writing the book that was to earn him such fame.
From the first chapters of what now forms volume two of And Quiet Flows the Don it is easy to pick out the heroes of his first version and imagine the roles they were to play. I get the impression that in the original arrangement the writer was keeping very much to the literary traditions of the day, to those tenets which had come to have the force of unwritten laws. There was Bunchuk, the Communist who carried on propaganda among soldiers at the front, and the monarchist officer Listnitsky. There were powerful descriptions of the fighting and suffering which led up to the February Revolution. Ivan Alexeyevich Kotlyarov was also apparently there in embryo form.
A careful reading of the present fourth part leads one to the conclusion that Grigory Melekhov was most _-_-_
^^*^^ I. Lezlmcv, Mikhail Shololclwu, Huss. ed., Moscow, 1948, p. 228.
27 probably not among the heroes of the first version. He makes casual short appearances, and he is completely absent from the passages about the Kornilov campaign. Grigory's successive promotions and his part in the fighting at this stage (for which Sholokhov himself admits using passages from his original version) are described in brief, fleeting episodes rather like movie sequences, totally uncharacteristic of Sholokhov.And Quiet Flows the Don really got going when Sholokhov abandoned what he had so far written and turned to the life of the Cossacks before the war, that is. when he found what was to become the nucleus of the book: the Melekhov family and in particular Grigory. Thus Sholokhov came round to the epic simplicity of the opening as we know it: ``The Melekhov farm was at the edge of the village---"
However, Sholokhov did not confine himself to the Melekhov household, but went on to widen the focus to the revolutionary storms which were gathering over Russia and the Don....
Little by little as he worked painstakingly over volumes one and two he was to develop and widen the subject-matter of the novel. His original plan of a portrayal of the role of the Cossacks in the Kornilov campaign was gradually enlarged into a grandiose four-volume epic of the Great October Socialist Revolution and the Civil War and the role of the Don Cossacks in these great events.
Sholokhov worked on the first two volumes of And Quiet Flows the Don from 1925 to 1928.
The literature of the 1920's produced a powerful, dramatic panorama of the revolutionary transformation of the country. Literature raised a wide range of questions, such as Country and Revolution, man and history, freedom and necessity, humanism and duty, class and universal values, will-power and weakness, the biological and the social, the conscious and the instinctive, and so on. The explosive material of politics invaded the arts. In this electric atmosphere ``eternal'' problems were charged with the excitement of new discoveries and became matters of life and death. By the answers he gave to this or that question a writer defined his position vis-a-vis the people and the Revolution, the events which had shaken the world.
28Almost all the literary groups of the twenties went in for innovation, in most cases understood in the purely formal sense, as a rejection of tradition and the experience of the past. Yet if we look back over the complex history of Soviet literature it is not hard to see that all that was best and avantgarde in the true sense of the word in the literature of the twenties, was a result of fruitful study of the great works of the past, and assimilation of the artistic achievements of Maxim Gorky.
Stefan Zweig, himself one of the finest writers of our age, spoke in 1928 of what struck him so about Gorky.
``I would include Gorky's alert mind among the few real wonders of our age. I can think of nothing in art today that comes anywhere near the clarity and accuracy of his vision. Not a hint of mystical haziness darkens his vision, not a smear of falsehood marks the crystal-clear lens, which neither magnifies nor minifies, never twists or distorts the image, or gives a false picture, never exaggerates light or darkness. Gorky always sees clearly, and he always sees the truth, and the truth he sees is peerless and the clarity inapproachable. Everything on which his honest, incorruptible gaze alights---and his eye is the most truthful and accurate instrument in art today---remains completely intact, for it misses nothing, distorts nothing, changes nothing but reflects only the purest, most exact reality.''^^*^^
Zweig's words do not strike one merely as an expression of boundless admiration for great talent. It is notable that he insistently drives home in different ways one and the same idea---``the peerless truth" and ``inapproachable clarity" of Gorky's works. Is there in fact anything special and unusual in what Zweig called ``Gorky's alert mind"? Was he not perhaps exaggerating when he included it ``among the few real wonders of our age"? Obviously he was not referring to the greatness of Gorky's talent, for Tolstoi and Dostoyevsky, to whom we shall be returning on several occasions, do not yield to Gorky in this respect. Why, then, did Zweig single out Gorky with such insistence from among the great realist writers?
From a careful reading we get the impression that _-_-_
^^*^^ Stefan Zweig, Begegnungen mil Menschen, Bucher/i, Stadten, Berlin-Franldurt am Main, 1955, pp. 101--02.
29 Zweig is endeavouring to understand that qualitatively new outlook on the world, that new approach to solving life's problems, which distinguished Gorky and which took the form of a new artistic method, being reflected in his art.Zweig considered it was Gorky's philosophy of life which gave him such confidence and force in his art and his capacity ``to miss nothing, distort nothing and change nothing''. He saw Gorky's strength to lie above all in his ``indissoluble kinship with the people".
``Gorky never once doubted the invincibility of the people,'' Zweig wrote. ``He believed in his people, and his people believed in him. Those great prophets Dostoyevsky and Tolstoi still feared revolution like a serious illness. Gorky was convinced that the sound health of the Russian nation would overcome this 'illness'. It was because he knew the masses and understood the Russian people, as a son knows his mother, that he never felt that mystical horror of the future which tortured these two great prophets of Russian literature. He knew that his people, any people, was strong enough to withstand all upheavals and overcome all dangers.''^^*^^
This kinship with the people, and the consequent possibility of capturing life in all its real essence and recreating the flow of existence is the great achievement of the art of our age. It is particularly interesting to note how this principle was grasped by Stefan Zweig, a writer who was himself far from what was later to be called socialist realism.
Right from the outset Soviet literature asserted the indestructible bond between art and the life of the people. The best works of the twenties truthfully portrayed the heroic reality of the Revolution and the Civil War, the people in arms, freeing themselves from the fetters of the past. They showed the mighty change which had occurred in the position, perception and psychology of millions of working people.
The leitmotif of Soviet literature of the twenties, the People and the Revolution, was caught up by Sholokhov in And Quiet Flows the Don. He was fascinated by the life of the people at the great turning-point in their history _-_-_
^^*^^ Ibid., pp. 103--04.
30 and attempted to reveal the guiding principles which lay behind the Revolution, and show how they affected every aspect of life.In writing his novel Sholokhov drew on the rich traditions of Russian literature which always endeavoured to discover the real needs and aspirations of the masses and comprehend their historical role. In creating his epic of the fortunes of the people in the Revolution and deciding on the artistic method to adopt, Sholokhov naturally turned for guidance to those masters of the epic genre, Tolstoi and Gogol.
From the time the first volumes of And Quiet Flows the Don appeared the work has often been compared to Tolstoi's War and Peace, and indeed the two works have a great deal in common, in the vast sweep of reality they portray, their epic structure, dramatic narrative and deep psychological penetration. The reader could not fail to note how the traditions of the Russian nineteenth-century classics were being continued in the new Soviet literature still in its infancy.
In many ways Sholokhov was also continuing the Gorky tradition. This similarity was not so much a matter of style or method but of fundamental ideological and aesthetic principles.
Sholokhov was a great admirer of Gorky both as a man and a writer. What attracted Sholokhov most in Gorky's works was his pride in man, his love for man the fighter, and his belief that the world would be transformed by the efforts of the working people. Sholokhov considered this revolutionary, humanistic element at the root of Gorky's art to be the writer's greatest gift to posterity.
``Gorky dearly loved those who struggled for a bright future for mankind and with all his heart and soul hated the exploiters and shop-keepers, and the petty bourgeois dozing in the quiet slough of provincial Russia.''^^*^^ It is unlikely that this brief newspaper report gives Sholokhov's speech word for word, but it expresses what was on the writer's mind, when along with all his fellow countrymen he was mourning the passing of ``the stormy petrel of the Revolution'', the great friend and teacher of all Soviet writers.
_-_-_^^*^^ Molot, June 23, 1936.
31Sholokhov presented to Gorky a copy of the first book of Virgin Soil Upturned with a very warm and friendly inscription.
Sholokhov was working on And Quiet Flows the Don at the same time Gorky was writing his epic chronicle The Life of Klim Samgin. These outstanding works of Soviet literature both show the power of socialist realism. As the past recedes never to return, the new life emerges victorious before our very eyes on Sholokhov's vast canvas of the Revolution and the Civil War. Even the lives of those characters in the novel that seem to be least involved in social developments are radically affected by the events of the Revolution, by the course of history. The purport of the revolutionary changes is revealed in the flow of life itself, in the complex of human destinies and the amazing human variety of the characters.
Sholokhov spent fifteen years writing And Quiet Flows the Don. At first the writer lived and worked in circumstances that were far from ideal. He met with doubts and reservations even from those who were closest to him. ``When he began work on And Quiet Flows the Don Sholokhov shut himself up in his father-in-law's study,'' wrote an Izvestia correspondent. ``His relations joked that he was writing 'a real novel', and over the title: 'What a title! He tells you it's a novel and it turns out to be a river!' But Sholokhov did not lose faith. He was determined he was going to write 'a real novel'.''~^^*^^
Sholokhov finished the first two volumes in 1927 and the novel began to appear in the earlier numbers of the magazine Oktyabr in 1928.
On April 19, 1928, Pravda carried an article by A. S. Seranmovich on it, which was full of sincere praise for the young writer: ``Sholokhov has never once said 'class' or 'class struggle'. Yet, as is the case with very great writers, the class stratification is imperceptibly woven into the narrative, the descriptions of people, and the _-_-_
^^*^^ A Collection of Literary Criticism on Mikhail Sholokhov, Russ. ed., Rostov-on-Don, 1940, p. 139.
32 chain of events and gradually grows and makes itself felt more and more as the grandiose age is unfolded before us. From the egg of some small, reasonably good. 'promising' stories a very special writer has hatched, unlike any other, with his own promising artistic personality.''^^*^^In the summer of 1931 Sholokhov sent book three of the novel to Oktyabr. He had worked hard on it and made many changes in the chapters previously published.
Sholokhov gradually brings Mikhail Koshevoi forward to occupy one of the most important places in the book, as a sort of antipode to Grigory Melekhov.
There is a much stronger patriotic note. The narrative had developed freely with a truly epic sweep. Sholokhov's portrayal of individual Red Army men, such as the fearless commander Likhachov; his description of sailors going into the attack singing the Internationale, of commanders and commissars marching into battle ahead of their men; his account of the fighting in the war-ravaged lands of the Don, of the terrible fate that befell the captured Veshenskaya Communists, and of the heroism of the people in arms are all tremendously powerful and pervaded with absolute faith in the triumph of Communist ideas. Sholokhov gives a masterly philosophical and artistic interpretation of these historical events, showing the people in arms as the only bearers of all that is beautiful and truly heroic.
Through such leading figures in the White Army as Denikin, Krasnov and others, he shows the Whites' venality and the way they were serving the Germans and the Allies. Both the monarchists and the Don autonomists are revealed in their true colours, as unpatriotic and enemies of the Russian people. Drawing on a wealth of documentary material Sholokhov shows that the various counter-revolutionary governments which succeeded one another on the Don were anti-popular and antinational.
The publication of book three of And Quiet Flows the Don was attended by considerable difficulties. Part six of the novel which dealt with the Upper Don uprising of 1919 in particular raised a storm of protest.
_-_-_^^*^^ A. Sorafimovich, Collected Works, Vol. 10, p. 362.
__PRINTERS_P_33_COMMENT__ 3---0697 33Book three had hegun to appear in Nos. 1-3 of the magazine Oktyabr in 1929 and publication was thereafter interrupted until 1932 (Oktyabr Nos. 1-8 and 10).
The history of book three is more than just a part of Sholokhov's biography, it is of great importance in understanding several essential aspects of socialist realism. For surely when a writer refuses to hide or draw the veil of silence over often contradictory and ambiguous historical facts but insists on delving into them and establishing their true place in history, this is not merely a question of fearlessness and great strength of mind but a purposeful method of reading the book of life, which permits him to perceive and demonstrate the historical process with the maximum of objectivity.
History was not something hostile to the writer or influencing him from without. By putting himself in the position of those who consciously and deliberately created the reality of the Revolution he transcended time and found that depth of understanding without which creative freedom is unthinkable. In this way he was able to shed light on the tragedies and mistakes and reveal all that was false and which obstructed development and progress.
The Upper Don uprising was one of the most tragic episodes of the Civil War. It broke out in February 1919 at the rear of the Red Army under the kulak SocialistRevolutionary slogan ``For Soviet Power Without the Communists''. One of the documents of the time mentions how the Red Army men were not a little astonished to see the insurgents' red banners with the slogan ``Long Live the Soviets! Down with the Communists!"^^*^^
Considerable forces had to be diverted to deal with the insurgents and this undoubtedly accounted to a large extent for the success .of Denikin's thrust towards Moscow.
After a painstaking study of a mass of data Sholokhov ventured to explain the causes of the revolt.
Part six of the novel, which told of the Veshenskaya rising, was finally completed after a great deal of effort had been spent on it. Its publication was largely held _-_-_
^^*^^ The Civil War In. Russia !!>!8-Jf>lt). Strategic Account of Attacking Operations on the Southern Front, January-May Russ. oil.. Moscow, 1919, p. 46.
34 up due to opposition from leading members of the RAPP.^^*^^This was a difficult period for Sholokhov. The enemies of Soviet literature were doing their utmost to slander the writer, maintaining that he had plagiarised the first two books of the novel.
But Sholokhov was not one to give way before any attacks, prejudices or narrow-mindedness. He fought for his book, upholding historical truth as the sine qua non of true artistic worth. The young writer not only demonstrated true civic courage, but showed unshakeable faith in the strength and ability of socialist art to tell the truth, however unsavoury it might be.
In a letter to Gorky of June 6, 1931, he made fun of those fellow writers who understood the tendentiousness of Soviet literature in grossly oversimplified terms.
``Some of my fellow writers who read part six and did not know that what I described was the historical truth, were strongly prejudiced against it,'' Sholokhov wrote. ``They protest against 'artistic fancy' carried over into life. Moreover, this prejudice is reflected in the notes that have been written in the margin of the manuscript, which are often quite ludicrous. In the chapter where I describe the Red Army entering Tatarsky village, there is the following sentence:
``'The riders (Red Army men) were bouncing up and down in the saddle in a most ungainly fashion.' A mark has been placed against this sentence with the following exclamation: 'Who?!... Red Army men bouncing up and down in a most ungainly fashion? Can one say such things about Red Army men?!... That's counter-revolution!'
``The person who made this indignant comment is doubtless unaware of the fact that the Red Army men were not cavalrymen, and that when they fought in the cavalry they rode appallingly badly: it was quite a common thing for a horse's back to get chafed. Anyway, it is impossible to ride in a dragoons' saddle without bouncing up and down. It's quite a different matter from riding in a Cossack saddle which has a high pommel and a cushion. Besides, anybody, even if he knows how to sit properly _-_-_
^^*^^ The Russian initials of Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (Rossiiskaya assotsiatsia prulelarskikh pisvtelei), 1925--1932.
__PRINTERS_P_35_COMMENT__ 3* 35 in a dragoons' saddle, sils badly compared to a Cossack. I just don't understand why the comrade who made the comment was so infuriated and expressed his revolutionary zeal with such a roll of the V. The important thing is not that they rode badly, but that so doing they beat people who rode excellently. These are all unimportant minor details. The indispensable condition they are imposing on me if I want to have part six published is the removal of a number of passages which are dearest of all to me (lyrical passages and some others). The interesting part about it is that ten men propose discarding ten different parts and to please them all I'd have to get rid of three-quarters of the whole....''In the same letter Sholokhov describes the true circumstances which led to the Veshenskaya uprising, on the basis of numerous documentary and eyewitness reports. He writes as follows:
``Now for a few remarks about the uprising:
``1. It arose as a result of exaggerated encroachments on the interests of the middle-peasant Cossacks.
``2. Denikin's emissaries took advantage of this situation. Working in the Upper Don region, their job was to direct the sporadic outbreaks of discontent into a single massive movement. A typical feature of the revolt was the fact that the vast majority of the 'outsiders' (not Cossacks) who had hitherto been the mainstay of Soviet power on the Don, fought on the side of the insurgents, forming detachments which fought more desperately and consequently better than the Cossack insurgents.
``Some 'orthodox' 'leaders' of the RAPP who read part six accused me of justifying the uprising as I pointed to the fact that the Upper Don Cossacks were annoyed because their interests had been seriously encroached upon. Is that really so? I merely drew a picture of the harsh reality which preceded the uprising without any exaggeration either way---
``But, Alexei Maximovich, I had to show the negative aspects of the policy which deprived the Cossacks of their special status and encroached on the interests of the middle-peasant Cossacks, for otherwise I could not reveal the causes of the uprising. For not only do people not rise up but even a flea doesn't bite just like that, without any reason.
36``In part six I introduced a lot of characters who only pay lip-service to Soviet power.... Setting them off against Koshevoi, Stockman, Ivan Alexeyevich and others, I wanted to show that not all were such overzealous activists, and that these overzealous people distorted the idea of Soviet power....
``I feel, Alexei Maximovich, that we have by no means done with the problem of the middle peasant, and neither have the Communists in those countries which will follow the road of our Revolution.''^^*^^
It is clear from this letter that the ``orthodox'' ``leaders'' of the RAPP rejected book six of And Quiet Flows the Don above all because they had a speculative approach to the historical process, taking it to be an absolutely positive fait accompli. The trouble was that they used it as an a priori postulate to ``sanctify'' all past events arid situations. But ``impeccability'' as an initial postulate is least of all applicable to the historical process, which involves millions of people, different classes, social groups and so on.
Both in his novel and in his letter to Gorky, Sholokhov pointed out the causes of the Veshenskaya uprising. But a writer who merely limited himself to indicating the causes, without following up all the real and possible consequences, would be behaving like the proverbial ostrich.
The inability to feel and comprehend events in their historical perspective inevitably leads to the distortion of the essence of those events.
Those who apply the evaluation of the historical process as a necessary and desirable development to all events and facts are adopting the position of Candide whom Voltaire made such fun of for his insistence that ``all is for the best in the best of possible worlds".
The truth can only be found through a concrete historical analysis of all the causes and results of a given event.
Sholokhov showed that there were people on the Don in 1919 who, like his Malkin, distorted the very ``idea of Soviet power''. In fact Serafimovich had written about this in 1919 in his article ``The Don'', published in Izvestia.
_-_-_^^*^^ First published in: I. Lezlmcv, Sliolok}iai''s Path, Russ. ed.. Moscow, 1958.
37``At times it was necessary to shoot Communist hangers-on and even Communists, who had disgraced themselves by abuse of their power and coercion, and to advertise the measures taken far and wide...''; ``the reform of the existing social structure was carried out without due regard for the special features of the economy, life and psychology of the Cossacks, without due regard for the conditions actually existing.... "^^*^^
The fact thatSholokhov was farsighted enough to understand the causes did not mean that he justified the events. With great dramatic force he showed that the revolt, supposedly raised ``for Soviet power" and which involved thousands of working Cossacks and ``outsiders'', was anti-popular and anti-national both in essence and in its consequences.
Perhaps Sholokhov's amazing powers of penetration, his deep insight, are most of all apparent in the vicissitudes of Grigory Melekhov, whom the struggle against the people brings to spiritual bankruptcy, loss of faith and the will to live even.
Sholokhov widened his sights further and further. The insurgents join up with whiteguard troops. One would have naturally expected the insurgents, surrounded as they were on all sides by superior Red Army forces, to welcome the link-up. Sholokhov shows that this was by no means the case. The mask of illusion was thrown off to reveal the bitter truth, the tragedy of these deluded, deceived people who were roused to wage a criminal war against the working people's Revolution.
Sholokhov's honest description of events as they actually happened helps the reader understand what the people went through in the years of the Revolution and the Civil War. The attempt to find a third alternative led to war against the Revolution, and only served the interests of the exploiter classes. History itself made Communist ideas the only possible answer to the requirements of the people.
Sholokhov's ``poetic affirmation of the course of history" was the result of his understanding of the fundamental principles of historical development, and his ability to express them through the style of the narrative, _-_-_
^^*^^ A. Serafimovich, Collected Works, Vol. 8, pp. 100--01.
38 character grouping, the individual fortunes of his heroes-- through various means at a writer's disposal.Thanks to the support and intervention of Gorky book three of And Quiet Flows the Don was finally published, and Sholokhov set to work on book four.
Sholokhov was to spend a long time writing book four.
``Everything had existed long since in rough,'' he later said, ``but I was constantly reworking it.''^^*^^
The size of the novel apparently took its final shape in 1934--1935. ``And Quiet Flows the Don will be a novel in four books,'' the writer declared.
He also spoke of the abundance of real-life material which had to be incorporated in book four, and the difficulties and the responsibility involved in his work on the concluding parts of the novel.
``To include such an abundance of material in one book, as you will understand yourself, is no easy task. This accounts for the slow rate at which the book is getting written. I have been working at it for a long time now. I did consider adding another book to the novel, but rejected the idea. I must finish it.''
It was about this time, it would seem, that the plan of book four finally took definite shape. The writer was already quite clear in his mind about the events Grigory Melekhov was to go through.
``At the'end of book three Melekhov is in command of an insurgent division near Veshenskaya. He strikes out northwards from here, towards Balashov, and then is forced to retreat with the White armies to Novorossiisk. After theYWhites have been crushed in the South and the Cossack armed struggle is over Melekhov joins the Red Army, and fights on the Polish front with the First Mounted Army.... He later joins an outlaw band.''^^**^^
With reference to the socio-historical significance of Grigory Melekhov's vicissitudes, Sholokhov insistently warned:
_-_-_^^*^^ A Collection of Literary Criticism on Mikhail Sholnkhoi;, p. 134.
^^**^^ fzvestia, March 10, 1935.
39``Melekhov's destiny is a purely individual phenomenon and I have no intention of suggesting that it is typical of the middle-peasant Cossacks. I take him away from the Whites, of course, but I will not make a Bolshevik of him. He is no Bolshevik.''^^*^^
Sholokhov deliberately spoke of the ``individuality'' of Grigory Melekhov's destiny, for there was a general tendency to generalise in literature at the time, to use the typical individual as representative of the mass, and Sholokhov was constantly warning us to be on our guard against a crude, oversimplified likening of Melekhov's destiny to that of the middle peasants. It was apparently this which led several critics later, in 1940--1941, to make the mistake of dividing Melekhov's life into two stages: the typical and the individual, untypical.
The necessity of making Melekhov's role in the Revolution clear led to a certain amount of reshuffling of the other characters. Sholokhov refrained from introducing any new figures. The Communist Mikhail Koshevoi was to come to the fore just before the end of the novel.
``Koshevoi stands out among the Bolsheviks in book four. I shall bring him into the foreground and focus more attention on him. It is extremely difficult to introduce any new characters into the novel, Bolsheviks or otherwise.''^^**^^
The way the two former friends' paths diverged in the Revolution was intended to make clear the social justice of what was happening by force of contrast.
In writing book four Sholokhov strove for psychological authenticity and at the same time for a deep social and philosophical comprehension of the life of Grigory Melekhov. To this end he counterposed his mercurial, vacillating hero with a man who was resolutely going out to meet the truth of the age.
Big changes were made to Aksinya's role in the final version. The writer's original intention was that she should stay ``alive to the last chapter''. ``She won't have children, but neither will she know heartbreak,''^^***^^ Sholokhov said.
_-_-_^^*^^ Ibid.
^^**^^ Ibid.
^^***^^ Ibid.
40But Sholokhov abandoned his original plans forAksinya whereby she was to come out of stormy events and violent upheavals unscathed, to live in joyless peace with the world and herself.
Aksinya was caught up in the vortex of the revolutionary upheavals of the age. She grew in stature to become a woman truly great in love and unafraid of risking all in her quest for happiness. She goes to her grave triumphant and unbroken. Struck down by a bullet, she falls in a flight of happiness, like a bird on the wing, just when it seems that her dreams are about to come true: her Grigory was beside her---her husband, her beloved, father of Mishatka and Polyushka whom she had brought up as her own, tasting all the joys of motherhood. It seemed nothing could separate them now: ahead lay the Kuban, the land of her hopes, of the happiness she had dreamed of for years. In a ravine far out in the steppe Grigory buries a happy Aksinya....
I feel that Aksinya's end was dictated not so much by the inner logic of the character as by the desire to strengthen the tragic note of Grigory Melekhov's culpability. For, after all, he was responsible for the death of this proud, passionate woman.
It is now possible to see exactly when it was that Sholokhov began to perfect part eight, chapter by chapter. Part seven was published in Novy Mir at the end of 1937 and the beginning of 1938 (1937, Nos. 11--12; 1938, Nos. 1-3). The writer dated the rough copy of part eight December 17, 1938. This is apparently when Sholokhov began the final stage of his work on the novel.
In 1939 Sholokhov mentioned in the course of an interview: ``I shall definitely finish it in February.''^^*^^ And indeed the eighth and last part of the novel was published in Nos. 2 and 3 of Novy Mir for 1940.
Soviet literature in the thirties was largely concerned with showing the new Soviet man in the making, which it did through the representation of life in its most varied aspects. Some books showed this process of universal historical significance through the reality of the day, others by revealing the way the typical features and qualities of socialist man developed.
_-_-_^^*^^ Molot, March 20, 1939.
41The great variety of themes and genres in the literature of the thirties was indicative of the great spiritual wealth of Soviet man, who was not only striving to comprehend the present and his place in it and the recent past of the Revolution and the Civil War, but was also carefully studying the whole history of his people and its outstanding figures.
Books of the most varied styles and genres were equally important in this---books like Ostrovsky's How the Steel Was Tempered, Alexei Tolstoi's Peter the Great, Sholokhov's Virgin Soil Upturned, Gorky's Life of Klim Samgin, Fedin's The Rape of Europe and Fadeyev's The Last of the Udeghes---and all of them represented different facets of one and the same method, socialist 'realism.
In the last parts of And Quiet Flows the Don Sholokhov was attempting the difficult task of translating the laws of historical development into convincing, concrete artistic terms.
The vast canvas of events of his epic was remarkable for its force and a wealth of colour, the unexpected changes in people's fortunes, the amazing wealth of individual personalities. For all its dramatic force, the narrative was nonetheless imbued with lyricism. The writer was able to conjure up the whole gamut of human emotions, from buoyant humour to tragic hopelessness.
``Art is never arbitrary if it is honest, unconstrained art. No, it is a holy scripture about life and man---its wretched and great, funny and tragic creator,''^^*^^ Gorky wrote to Fedin.
This lofty conception of honest, unconstrained art certainly applies to Sholokhov's novel, which is imbued with love and respect for the working man.
And so the eighth and last part of And Quiet Flows the Don was published in Novy Mir (Nos. 2 and 3) in 1940. Thus Sholokhov's work on his novel---the weightiest in Soviet literature which had taken years of colossal effort to complete---was finally over. Right from the start, from the publication of the first two books, interest in the novel had been tremendous. The novel had conquered an exceptionally wide section of the reading public. It was argued about, and the appearance of each new _-_-_
^^*^^ K. Fedin, Gorky Among Us, Russ. ed., Moscow, 1944, p. 151.
42 part was awaited with great excitement. It would be no exaggeration to say that the novel became an event in the life of the people. The concluding part was received with enthusiasm. ``You remain stunned by its power for a long time after you've finished reading it.... The book is remarkable among other things for the way it makes you think. And one of the things you think is: what a great writer there is living in our day.''^^*^^There was lively discussion on the novel in the press following the publication of the last part. Not one of those who wrote about it denied its tremendous artistic power, and indeed how could they? The dozens of newspaper and magazine articles, both those that were enthusiastic over the work and those that were more reserved in their praise and contained critical comments, were all visibly stunned by the great truth and artistic power of And Quiet Flows the Don.
_-_-_^^*^^ Y. Lukin, ``The Concluding Part of And Quiet Flows thr Don,'' Literaturnaya Gazeta, March 1, 1940.
[43] __NUMERIC_LVL2__ Chapter Two __ALPHA_LVL2__ THE TRAGEDY OF GRIGORY MELEKHOVMikhail Sholokhov was the first writer to give such a broad picture of the life of the Don Cossacks, and the first to create an epic of the Cossacks' role in the Revolution.
The Don Cossacks who never knew serfdom were a caste apart from the ordinary peasants. The difference was not only in their education---Cossacks were brought up to be bold and resourceful and prepared for military service from childhood. The tsarist government had always encouraged them to consider themselves a special caste, and to look on the ``muzhiks'' and town workers with contempt. They were brought up as loyal servants of ``tsar and country".
Grigory Melekhov had had it impressed on him since childhood that ``Cossack'' was the most honourable of titles. Indeed, the biggest insult among the Cossacks was to call someone a muzhik.
When Stockman, the underground Bolshevik organiser, intervened in the murderous brawl that had broken out between Cossacks and Ukrainians and said, ``Long ago serf peasants ran away from the landowners and settled along the Don. They came to be known as Cossacks,'' he is met by the angry cry: ``The swine wants to make muzhiks out of us!" (1, 189). This caste alienation, so carefully cultivated by the tsarist authorities and the Cossack landowners, officers and kulaks was to manifest itself with particular acuteness during the Civil War, in the separatist movement whereby the Don Cossacks strove to secede from revolutionary Russia and set up their own ``Cossack system".
The Cossacks were won over by a big allotment of land. As one of the heroes of Serafimovich's story On the Brink 44 put it, speaking of the Cossacks who had helped put down the 1905 Revolution, ``they stuffed themselves on land".
The .way the Melekhovs---who were middle Cossacks--- lived is clear from the words of the head of the family Pantelei Prokofyevich: ``Even without this year's harvest we've got grain enough for a couple of years. Praise be, we've got our bins full to the lids and some more elsewhere....''
The Cossacks exploited the peasant ``outsiders'', and the landless settlers. But the poor and middle Cossacks worked the land themselves with the help of their families. ``Me and the old man slaved away day and night,'' says Ilyinichna, and in the novel we see the life of toil of many Cossack families.
In And Quiet Flows the Don Sholokhov lays bare the social heterogeneity of the Cossacks at the time of the Revolution.
Cossack generals and officers like Listnitsky owned vast estates---thousands of acres of land. The kulak Miron Korshunov had accumulated great wealth and power on his Tatarsky village. He employed permanent labourers, bought up land, and went in for thoroughbred livestock breeding. The merchant Mokhov and his partner Atepin squeezed the poorer Cossacks, making loans for interest.
Cossacks like Mikhail Koshevoi, unable to cultivate their own land, worked as hired labourers. Others, like Ivan Alexeyevich Kotlyarov, abandoned the land and went to work at Mokhov's mill, becoming semi-peasant, semi-worker. Among these poorer villagers arose a deep discontent with the existing state of things. A worker at Mokhov's mill, nicknamed Knave, remembered 1905 and nursed a seething hatred towards the wealthy and a longing for revenge. He was confident that there would be another revolution and that the time would come to get even with the oppressors.
Before the war and Revolution came and stirred up the whole country Grigory Melekhov never even thought of social problems. The Melekhov family, although not rich, were reasonably well-off and respected. Grigory loved his farm and the work on it. We see him haymaking, harvesting, ploughing in autumn. He felt an inner need for work. Without it life lost its meaning and when he was 45 away at war, his mind returned again and again to his near and dear ones, his native village, and work in the fields, and he was gripped by a deep nostalgic yearning. ``It would be good to have his hands on the plough-handles and walk along the damp furrow behind the plough, his nostrils greedily drinking in the raw, fresh scent of crumbling earth, the bitter smell of grass cut by the ploughshare.''
Grigory Melekhov grew up in a society which greatly respected military valour. The Cossacks went to church and attended village assemblies dressed in military uniform with shoulder straps, and decked out with all their medals. Awards like the St. George Cross evoked great respect and admiration for the bearer. This attitude to tsarist awards which had been instilled in Grigory from childhood, was to do him much harm in the future, leading him astray from the right path on which the Bolshevik Garanzha had set him when he was in hospital.
``Serve as you should. Service for the Tsar will not be in vain,'' Grigory's father writes to him when he is doing his army service before the outbreak of war, signing the letter: ``Your father, Senior Sergeant Pantelei Melekhov" (1, 313). His father was more than his parent; he was a Senior Sergeant. For Pantelei Prokofyevich this military title meant that added respect was due.
Cossack families were patriarchal. The father was the senior member of the family and absolute master of the household. He could have the village give a disobedient son a public birching. Fear of his father and absolute obedience to him was instilled in the Cossack from childhood, and such obedience and respect for their elders was taught not only in the home but in the army too during military service. Thus the senior Cossacks had the right to punish their juniors.
Pantelei Prokofyevich kept a firm hand over his family. When in a rage he was capable of beating Grigory over the back with his crutch, and giving his wife what for if she took the part of a member of the family who had been disobedient. This did not prevent the Melekhovs from being a loving, close-knit family. When Grigory rushed on Stepari Astakhov, who was beating his wife Aksinya almost to death because of her affair with Grigory, Pyotr did not hesitate to join his younger brother. 46 The two brothers' love for one another is apparent throughout the novel. Pyotr's death at the hand of the Communist Koshevoi during the Civil War is one of the blows that drives Grigory onto the path of struggle [ against the people.
In spite of his mettlesome, touchy nature, Grigory got along pretty well with his family. When his father decided to marry Grigory, who had ``disgraced him" by carrying on with Aksinya, he tamely led Natalya to the altar. Of course this was largely due, too, to youthful thoughtlessness and his underestimating the strength of his feelings for Aksinya.
Grigory loves his home and family and is attached to his native village. He had never felt discontent with the way of life he had grown up with. Even when he broke with his family and went into service he was not divorced from village life. True, he did dream of going away to the Kuban, far, far away to where ``beyond the rolling hills, beyond the long grey road lay a welcoming land of blue skies, a fairy-tale land with Aksinya's love, in all its rebellious late-flowering strength, to make it the more attractive" (1, 223). But the fairy-tale tone which Sholokhov adopts in this passage conveys how unrealistic and impracticable this dream was. Grigory is due to be called up for military service and this keeps him from going right away from the village. Even so, he would have been unlikely to leave his native parts. When Aksinya proposed that they throw up everything and go to the mines ``far away'', Grigory answered her with surprising cool-headedness and sensible clear-- sightedness: ``You're a fool, Aksinya, a fool! You talk away, but you say nothing worth listening to. How can I leave the farm? I've got to do my military service next year.... I'll never stir anywhere away from the land.... I'll never leave the village" (1, 80).
Indeed Grigory misses the farm and the village when he and Aksinya are working on Listnitsky's estate at Yagodnoye. ``I miss the village, Pyotr,'' he complains to his brother (1, 284), and eagerly asks him for news of home in a tone which leaves no doubt as to how important it is to him.
Although Nagulnov in Virgin Soil Upturned is somewhat similar to Grigory in character, there is this big 47 difference: whereas the former breaks forever with his rich family because of his early born dislike for `` property'', Grigory never really burns his bridges and always leaves a chance for a reconciliation with his family and the village. When his father and brother suggest he return it is because they sense this. When Grigory, who is serving in the army, is informed that Natalya is living with his family and that she is waiting for him, he gives an evasive, non-committal reply, merely saying that Aksinya has a child by him, and that he cannot abandon it. This strong attachment to his farm, to his land typical of the peasants generally, was particularly strong in the case of the relatively well-off middle peasant. Throughout the Civil War Grigory never forgot for a moment that he had his own land, his own farm.
Grigory Melekhov's great humaneness reveals itself in everything. In a violent family drama, in the trials of war, and in the minutiae of everyday life---everywhere he demonstrates the strong sense of justice, self-respect and passionate love for life.
When he accidentally cuts a little wild duckling in two while mowing he stares with deep compassion at the little ball growing cold in his palm. The pain he felt was a manifestation of Grigory's characteristic love for all live creatures, for people and for nature.
It was only natural therefore that Grigory should have been so distressed when he first came face to face with the horrors of war. For a long time he could not get over his first battle and the Austrian he had cut down. ``I cut down a man, and I'm sick at heart because of him, the swine!" he confides to his brother (1, 404). He begins to have doubts about the point of the First World War and is haunted by an uneasy feeling of its being as futile as it is disastrous.
As a farmer, Grigory has a strong sense of kinship with the world around him. This organic relation to nature and the capacity to appreciate its beauty has long appeared in Russian literature as a measure of man and his spirit. Man's attitude to nature was a favourite method of 48 characterisation with Lev Tolstoi, whose negative characters have as a rule a limited awareness and appreciation of life in all its facets. Sholokhov adopts this method widely in And Quiet Flows the Don. The paucity of spirit of Colonel Listnitsky is revealed in his inability to appreciate the beauty of the Don steppe, while the rich natures of the Communists Likhachov and Podtyolkov are expressed in their full-blooded response to the beauties of nature. Sholokhov's favourite characters--- Grigory, Aksinya and Pantelei Prokofyevich---live and move in the world of nature with its wealth of colour and sound.
We see Grigory early in the morning on the day his brother is due to leave for the summer training camp, leading his horse down to the Don to water it. ``Slanting across the Don lay the wavy never-ridden track of the moonlight. Over the river hung a mist, and above it, the stars, like sprinkled grain. The horse set its hoofs down cautiously. The slope to the water was hard going. From the farther side of the river came the quacking of ducks. A sheat-fish jumped with a splash in the muddy shallows by the bank, hunting at random for smaller fry.
``Grigory stood a long time by the river. The bank exuded a dank and musty rottenness. A tiny drop of water fell from the horse's lips. There was a light, pleasant void in Grigory's heart, he felt good and free from thought" (1, 30).
The scene is described as if through Grigory's eyes. There is nothing unusual about it for him, it is part of his everyday life. Yet he sees the stars as being ``like sprinkled grain''. He notices in passing the quacking of ducks, and his attention is drawn to the splash a fish makes jumping, which for him, keen fisher that he is, evokes an almost tangible image of the sheat-fish hunting at dawn. Sholokhov shows amazing skill here in the way he reveals Grigory's response to nature. He rejects a conventional phrase to describe the beam of moonlight on the river and uses instead the typical Don word for track, and the expressive term ``never-ridden''. This is more than a precise description. It gives the narrative a touch of local colour so that we see Grigory standing by the river looking at the track of moonlight and sensing, rather __PRINTERS_P_49_COMMENT__ 4---0697 49 than being consciously aware of it, the transparent path, untrodden by man.
The reader cannot help feeling that the ``never-ridden track of the moonlight" is part of Grigory's own personal experience, and that he is part of this joyous world of light and colour.
The landscape in which we see Grigory is far more than a setting for the action in progress. Sholokhov always tries to make us feel that Grigory is a part of the world he moves in. For Grigory, Aksinya's hair ``smells like henbane" (1, 45) and ``the faint scent of the winter wind, or perhaps of fresh steppe hay, came from her fresh cold mouth" (1, 225). By means of these and similar poetic comparisons the author tries to transmit Grigory's sensitivity, his appreciation of a woman's beauty. In fact Sholokhov endows Grigory with a sharp appreciation of all that is beautiful.
A character's real nature and aesthetic significance is frequently revealed through his environment and his relationships with other characters. Grigory's appreciation of beauty is revealed in the story of his relationship with Aksinya and Natalya, for example. His love for the proud Aksinya, whose wild, fatal beauty does not fade with the years, and his life with Natalya---also beautiful but in quite a different way, a faithful, loving wife and mother---throw much light on his character.
Grigory is a man of strong passions and resolve. His love for Aksinya with all its violent ups and downs is remarkably strong and deep. When he comes home on leave to convalesce after his discharge from hospital and learns that Aksinya has been ``carrying on" with young lieutenant Listnitsky, he gives him a fearful beating, drops Aksinya and returns home. But neither Aksinya's faithlessness, nor life with Natalya, nor even the children could douse his passion, and he spent many a night at the front yearning for Aksinya.
Grigory's highly developed sense of personal dignity and his consciousness of being any man's equal was bound to lead to many a sharp conflict in a class society with its laws of subordination and oppression---as indeed it did. While the new recruits were passing muster Grigory felt a strong dislike for the white-handed officers. His ``rough swarthy fingers" happened to lightly brush ``the 50 sugar-white hand" of one of the officers. The officer snatched his hand away, rubbed it on the edge of his greatcoat, frowning fastidiously, and drew on his glove. Grigory noticed his action and straightened up with a bitter smile. Their eyes met, and the officer flushed and raised his voice: ``What's all this, what's all this, Cossack?" (1, 308). On a later occasion, when a sergeant-major swoops on him with raised fist by a well in Radzivillovo, he addresses him with fearful hatred in his voice: ``Look here ... if you strike me---I'll kill you. Understand?" (1, 333). And the sergeant-major who, encouraged by the officers, was used to settling things with his fists, turned on his heel and walked away.
In the grey routine of army life Grigory often felt a wall of silence between himself and the smart, idle officers. It was only natural that he, a working man used to earning his living by the sweat of his brow, although not fully aware of the class division of society, should nonetheless understand perfectly well that landowners and officers belonged to a different world, and that he should despise these parasites and idlers who were his ``superiors''. This feeling was to grow in him, and during the Civil War his deep, searing hatred for the oppressors and parasites would erupt on many an occasion.
Grigory was always ready to take up arms when human dignity was insulted. He was ready to use his fists on the Cossacks who raped Franya the housemaid, and would have, had they not tied him up and threatened to kill him; and when on the parade ground the troop commander asked him why a button was missing from his greatcoat, Grigory, overwhelmed by the memory of what had happened, felt like crying for the first time in years at his powerlessness.
This was Grigory Melekhov at the outbreak of the First World War.
The art of moulding an Impressive, powerful literary character is a difficult and complex one. We may feel that we have learned a lot about Grigory Melekhov from the everyday life of himself and his family, from his __PRINTERS_P_52_COMMENT__ 4* 51 complicated and confused relationships with JNatalya arid Aksinya. The swarthy Cossack with his sombre, somewhat savage expression, hot-tempered to the point of recklessness, proud and always ready to uphold his self-respect, resolute, abrupt, tender and rough, stands before the reader as real as if he were of flesh and blood. There is remarkable strength in his slightly hunched body, his darting glance, the way he works and the dashing figure he cuts in the saddle. Yet we cannot really know the young Grigory completely until we have examined the socio-historic environment he lived and grew up in.
And Quiet Flows the Don is a freely flowing narrative, with many characters and events but indirectly linked to the main heroes. Yet, at the same time, every scene, every chapter, throws light on the complicated and illstarred life of Grigory Melekhov, often from the most unexpected angle.
The picture we are given of the life and fortunes of the Don Cossacks, while being of interest in itself, at the same time serves as an indirect means of characterisation, throwing additional light on Grigory Melekhov.
We know next to nothing, for example, of Grigory's attitude to the war when it first broke out; we do not know what he thought it was all about when he found himself flung into the bloody conflict. Sholokhov is a clever writer who leaves nothing to chance. He switches the scene of action to Tatarsky village and to Stockman, slowly but surely sowing the seeds of unrest and discontent with the existing order among the poorer Cossacks, thereby furthering their awakening to class-consciousness. Stockman tries to explain the causes of war, the struggle among capitalist states for markets and colonies. Those he talked to apparently understood him, but they were a small group, numbering ten at the outside.
The village elders spoke of the war in very different terms. Talking with the old men in the market place, Pantelei Prokofyevich told them how Grigory had written that there would soon be war. The old men recalled past wars and exchanged prognoses:
``'But there won't be any war.... Look at the harvest.'
``'The harvest has nothing to do with it. It's the students giving trouble, I expect.'
52``'In any case we shall be the last to hear of it. But who will the war be with?'
``'With the Turks, about the sea. They can't come to an agreement on how to divide the sea.'
``'Is it so difficult? Let them divide it into two strips, like we do the meadowland.'
``The talk turned to jest, and the old men went about their business" (1, 319).
Such primitive notions about war and its causes were only possible in an isolated community, and in a place far removed and isolated from the main proletarian centres.
The account of the first battles in which Grigory took part is preceded by the lively, picturesque scene of the general mobilisation of the Cossacks. Sholokhov describes the animated, motley crowd in the square, interspersing the narrative with dialogue in a masterly fashion. The excited chatter of the crowd in the square seems to buzz in the reader's ears as if he were there himself. The women, attired in their holiday clothes, lined the fences along the streets. The commission inspected the horses. Many of the Cossacks were drunk.
``'But suppose there's a war?'
``'Pah, my friend! What country could stand up to us?'
``In a neighbouring group a handsome, elderly Cossack was arguing heatedly.
``'It's nothing to do with us. Let them do their own fighting, we haven't got our corn in yet.'
``'It's a shame! Here we are standing here, and on a day like this we could harvest enough for a whole year.'
``'The cattle will get among the stocks!'
``'And we'd just begun to reap the barley!'"
This sober, circumstantial talk (clearly elderly Cossack farmers are speaking) is interrupted by joking and complaining at the tavern being closed leaving them nowhere to drink. Then a ``blood-stained and completely drunk" Cossack is led into the village administration. Tearing open his shirt he shouts: ``I'll show the muzhiks! I'll have their blood! They'll know the Don Cossack!" which causes a ripple of laughter and comments of approval.
``'That's right, give it to them!'
``'What have they grabbed him for?'
53``'He went for some muzhik!'
``'Well, they deserve it.'
``'We'll give them some more!'
``'I took a hand when they put them down in 1905. That was a sight worth seeing!'
``'There's going to be war. They'll be sending us again to put them down.'
``'Enough of that. Let them hire people for that, or let the police do it. It's a shame for us to'" (1, 343--344).
These masterfully penned scenes, quite apart from the validity they have in themselves, are also important both for the picture they give of the environment in which Grigory was brought up and the help they give in understanding the ideas with which the young Cossack was equipped when he entered the war. Grigory had a minimal grasp of politics, limited to his naive ideas about the tsar, the country, and his military duty as a Cossack. He displayed great courage in battle, and was the first in the village to be awarded a Cross of St. George, but he did not think very hard about what he was fighting for. As time went on and battle followed battle he grew more and more weary and disillusioned and became increasingly perplexed and tormented by doubts.
While in hospital Grigory met up with the clever and sharp-tongued Bolshevik soldier Garanzha, whose words, as powerful as they were true, turned the whole system on which his life had hitherto been based into a smoking ruin. ``It had already grown rotten, eaten up with the canker of the monstrous absurdity of the war, and it needed only a jolt. That jolt was given, and Grigory's artless straightforward mind awoke" (1, 512). With horror he realised that what Garanzha said about the senselessness of the war was true. He was unable to sleep and awoke Garanzha in the night. Blazing with anger he asked him: ``You say we are being driven to death for the benefit of the rich. But what about the people? Don't they understand?" He struggled with the question of how to stop the war. ``So you think everything has to be turned upside down?... And what will you do with the war when you've got the new government?... How are you going to root out war, when men have fought for ages?" (1, 513,514). Garanzha had an answer for 54 everything, and on saying goodbye to him, Grigory thanked him with feeling: ``Well, khokhol, thank you for opening my eyes. I can see now, and I'm not good to know" (1,516).
It is impossible to overestimate the importance of Grigory's first political schooling. It was to bear good fruit in the first months of the October Revolution, when spurred to action by it he was to side with the Bolsheviks and lead the Cossacks into the struggle against the Whites. And despite the fact that he was soon to wander from the true path, it nonetheless gave a mighty jolt to his ideas and feelings.
Grigory returns home on leave, and his discontent with the war and rage against those who drove people to the slaughter, combined with his own wounded self-esteem explode in the scene where he beats Listnitsky mercilessly. His family and the entire village soothed his tortured soul, flattering him with unconcealed adulation. After all, here was the first Cossack from the village to have received a Cross of St. George home on leave. The old men talked to him as an equal. He caught sidelong, respectful glances following him wherever he went. People took off their hats to him as he walked by and the women and young girls did not conceal their admiration. His family were almost ingratiatingly attentive to his needs. Pantelei Prokofyevich strode proudly along beside him on their way to church or to the market place. It was only natural that it should have gone to his head. After all, there were few who could hope to command such respect. The truth Garanzha had revealed to him, and his bitter invective faded into the darkest recesses of his mind. The time-honoured order seemed unshakeable, the deep-rooted Cossack concepts of honour, and military valour which had been instilled in him throughout his life once again assumed their former exciting attraction. ``Grigory returned to Tatarsky one man, and went back to the front another.... Mentally still unreconciled to the senselessness of the war, nonetheless he faithfully defended his Cossack honour" (2, 55, 56); he seized ``every opportunity of displaying reckless prowess, risking his life in madcap adventures, changing his clothes and going into the enemy's rear, capturing outposts, and feeling that the pain for other men which had oppressed 55 him during the first days of the war had gone for ever" (2, 59--60).
With the advent of such an important historical event as the imperialist war, bringing in its wake so many serious and unexpected consequences, and with a revolutionary situation rapidly developing in the country it was important that the spotlight be trained for a while on Grigory's socio-political awareness. Sholokhov brings him into contact with various people professing very definite social views of a radically different nature. The Cossack Uryupin and the soldier Garanzha are the litmus-paper on which we can observe the various changes Grigory's views undergo.
Grigory meets up with Uryupin at the front during the war. Uryupin preaches a loathsome philosophy of contempt and hatred for man, and indeed epitomises the ideal of the Cossack warrior, loyal to tsar and country, so dear to the hearts of the governing classes of tsarist Russia. He is a true product of the bourgeois-landowner class society with all its inhumanity and callousness.
Uryupin's cynical advice to Grigory who is still tormented by the memory of the Austrian he had killed, is: ``Cut a man down boldly!... Don't think about the why and wherefore. You're a Cossack, and it's your business to cut down without asking questions.... You mustn't kill an animal unless it's necessary, but destroy man! He's a heathen, unclean; he poisons the earth, he lives like a toadstool!" (1, 433). Grigory takes an active dislike to him from the outset. He fires a shot at Uryupin when he learns that he has cut down a Hungarian prisoner in cold blood. When Uryupin refers to the incident some time later Grigory informs him: ``If I'd killed you I'd have had one sin the less on my conscience" (1, 490).
Grigory's instinctive humanity, sucked in with his mother's milk, finally triumphed in Grigory over the philosophy of annihilation professed by Uryupin. The obvious senselessness of the war aroused uneasy thoughts, anguish and discontent in him. At this juncture the author brings Grigory into contact with Garanzha, and face to face with a great human truth. For a while democracy and humanism gain the upper hand in Grigory over his class and property prejudices.
56Grigory begins his tireless search for a great truth, a solution valid for the whole people. Later he was to renounce his search as a naive childish dream, and turn to finding a solution which only took Cossack interests into account. He returns home from hospital, convinced that he has theright answer and knows on which side the truth lies.
His break with Aksinya and the reconciliation with his family and the village is accompanied by a return to the ideas of military duty and Cossack honour fostered in him from childhood.
Here begins the tragic story of a strong, volatile man's harsh ordeals and painful vicissitudes in the vortex of the Civil War. Grigory's soul becomes a battle ground where the great human truth being put into practice by the people in revolt is locked in a mortal combat with the dark, evil forces of the deep-rooted habits of the old world with its property interests and class feelings. The ``self-willed and merry lad" traverses a terrible, thorny path, strewn with irreparable losses. The struggle against the people, against the great truth of life leads him on to an ignominious end. A tragic figure will stand before us amid the ruins of the old world, a broken man for whom there is no place in the life that is beginning.
Grigory was to lose many fine human qualities from choosing the wrong path in the Revolution and finding himself at odds with the people. On his return to the war after resting at home and being thoroughly immersed in his Cossack world again, Grigory pals up with Uryupin. There are no longer the quarrels and incidents between them that there had been, and Uryupin's influence is more clearly discernible in Grigory's changed character and psychology. ``The pain for other men ... had gone.'' Grigory's heart ``had grown hard and coarse'', and suddenly we are struck by the painful realisation of the awful connection between the time-honoured Cossack way of life and traditions, and Uryupin's degenerate^ inhuman philosophy. The reader suddenly finds himself associating the Melekhov family and their way of life with Uryupin and his heinous ideas.
57Sholokhov's remarkably skilful oblique characterisation is one of the chief attributes of his talent. While giving the reader much food for thought, he never hands out ready-made conclusions or presses his own opinions on him.
We are told very little about Grigory's life at the front after his return from leave. What we do know we learn from a few brief general accounts by the author or from Grigory's reminiscences. The focus is on the changes that had taken place in Grigory's character and outlook. ``With cold contempt he played with his own and others' lives.... But he knew that he no longer laughed as in former days; he knew his eyes were sunken and his cheekbones stood out sharply; he knew that if he kissed a child he could not look straight into those clear, innocent eyes. He knew what price he had paid for his crosses and medals" (2, 60). This was the Grigory that met the Revolution.
But Garanzha had sown a live seed in his soul. Grigory did not forget the words of his intelligent, bitter room-mate in the hospital. Once he tried to explain the main essence of Garanzha's teaching to Uryupin. As was to be expected, Uryupin expressed complete disagreement: ``There's no sense ever comes from these revolutions, only mischief. You remember this, that what we Cossacks need is our own government, and not any other! We need a strong tsar.... We've got nothing in common with the muzhiks....'' (2, 62). He tried to persuade Grigory that the Cossacks had their own special interests to defend. But Grigory disagreed and complained that he ``always thinks along one track" (2, 63).
Grigory tries to avoid adopting a parochial Cossack view of the future and take the wider interests of the people at large into account as Garanzha had taught him. Thus the way is paved for his going over to the Bolsheviks in the first months of the Revolution. He opposes Uryupin, this tsarist and inveterate defender of Cossack class privileges, though he does so weakly and vaguely, as if himself doubting the truth of what he is saying. This is the complex character Sholokhov creates for us: a man for numerous reasons prone to grave political doubts and hesitation, who has great difficulty in feeling his way amid the apparent chaos of the revolutionary upheavals.
58The Great October Revolution and the Civil War that followed faced Grigory Melekhov with a serious dilemma: what direction should he take and with whom should he go along?
The Bolsheviks brought peace to the war-weary country. Most of the front-line Cossacks were tired of the war and sided with them.
At the outbreak of the Revolution Grigory's sympathies for the Bolsheviks were still weak and little developed. He had never had any firm political convictions, nor was he to find any throughout the Civil War. His lack of firm social beliefs is revealed in the story of his relationships with two people---Lieutenant Izvarin and the revolutionary Cossack Poityolkov.
Izvarin served in the same regiment as Grigory. Unlike Uryupin he was well-educated, widely read and an eloquent speaker, and he poisoned Grigory's mind with the dangerous ideas of Cossack autonomy and separatism. Son of a well-to-do Cossack, he campaigned for the secession of the Don Province from revolutionary Russia. Grigory had heated arguments with him. How could the Don live without Russia, he wanted to know, when they had nothing except wheat. But Izvarin easily triumphed over the semi-literate Grigory in these verbal duels.
It is notable that in their arguments both Izvarin and Melekhov treated the Cossacks as a single, united people apart and that neither of them saw them as being divided by class differences. This social blindness was indeed Grigory's Achilles' heel.
Brought up in a traditional property society, Grigory is unable to grasp the completely new, unprecedented order on which the new society is to be built. He is unable to break out of that vicious circle of concepts of the life based on property relations which divides people into hostile classes.
``If the Bolsheviks get the upper hand it will be good for the workers and bad for the rest. If the monarchy returns, it will be good for the landowners and suchlike and bad for the rest,'' Izvarin impressed on Grigory (2, 252--253). ``In real life it never works out that everybody 59 gets an equal share,'' Izvarin had said, and Grigory was to repeat these words himself.
Grigory came into contact with Fyodor Podtyolkov, then a sergeant-major in a Guards battery, but later to become the first chairman of the Don Revolutionary Committee. Grigory tries to give a paraphrase of Izvarin's ``autonomist'' arguments, but Podtyolkov confounds him with the incontestable truth of his answers:
``The atamans will go on just the same as before, oppressing the people who have to work. You will go before some 'Excellency', and he'll give you one on the snout. A fine life indeed! Better hang a mill-stone round your neck and jump into the river.... Once you've overthrown the tsar and the counter-revolution you must see the government passes into the hands of the people. That story about the old times is all fairy-tales. In the old days the tsars oppressed us, and now if the tsars don't, somebody else will" (2, 257).
There is confusion and unrest in the region. Kornilov's Volunteer Army is being formed on the Don. In Novocherkasskataman Kaledin gathers units that have remained loyal to the old regime. At Kamenskaya, front-line Cossacks elect a Revolutionary Committee.
Grigory Melekhov joins the struggle on the side of the Revolution. He commands a Red Guard detachment in the battle at Glubokaya against the forces of Chernetsov, composed mainly of officers, and has an important clash with Podtyolkov there. On Podtyolkov's orders the Cossacks massacre Chernetsov and the officers taken prisoner. With his usual impetuosity Grigory challenges Podtyolkov.
There is more than humaneness behind this instinctive movement: all his latent discontent is bursting to the surface.
``He wanted to turn his back upon the whole hateriddled and incomprehensible world. Behind him everything was entangled, contradictory. The right path was difficult to trace; the ground quaked under his feet as in a bog, the path branched in many directions and he felt no confidence that he had chosen the right one. He had been drawn towards the Bolsheviks, had led others after him, then had hesitated, and his heart had cooled. 'Is Izvarin right after all? Who are we to trust?'" (2, 341).
60It is in this tortured state of mind that Grigory returns home to recuperate after being wounded by a whiteguard bullet. The right path was indeed difficult to trace. He was to spend the whole Civil War trying to do so.
Grigory's ignorance of the laws of historical development strengthens his aversion to the war and his longing to return to his home and his old life. His desire to retire from the struggle only arises when he finds himself at the cross roads and does not know which way to take. The vital question for us, therefore, in our examination of the ill-starred life of Grigory Melekhov, is what was it that made his search for the truth so difficult, that harrowed him and caused him to waver so?
Grigory Melekhov belonged to the ``petty bourgeois or semi-petty bourgeois working masses" for whom vacillation between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat was inevitable. The outcome of the revolutionary struggle was finally decided, as Lenin pointed out, by these millions finally coming down on the side of the workers and poor peasants.
``...And if anything decided the issue of the struggle against Kolchak and Denikin in our favour, despite the fact that they were supported by the Great Powers, it was that both the peasants and working Cossacks, who for a long time remained in the other camp, have in the end come over to the workers and peasants---and it was only this that finally decided the war and brought about our victory.''^^*^^ These words are from a speech Lenin addressed to working Cossacks in 1920. •
By making the hero of his epic a man from a middlepeasant background Sholokhov was able to reveal one of the cardinal problems of the Revolution, and its great socio-political experience. His bold, fearless portrayal of the tragedy of a man from the people who was richly endowed by nature and should have allied himself with the revolutionary forces but failed to do so, was a revelation in our literature, for he was bringing layers of life to the surface which had been hardly touched upon before.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 30, p. 396.
61Lenin gave a very accurate definition of the contradictory nature of the peasant toiler: ``The peasants are half labourers and half property-owners.''^^*^^
In Grigory Melekhov Sholokhov gives a penetrating psychological analysis of the struggle between deeprooted property habits and the affinities of the toiler.
Throughout the Civil War Grigory remains firmly opposed to the idea of sharing out the Cossack land. As soon as the land is mentioned the property instinct comes out in him, the instinct to defend his property, if necessary with his life.
Immediately after his return home from serving in the Red Guards Grigory tries to convince his father and Pyotr that land should be given to those ``outsiders'', from other provinces who have been living on the Don for a long time. ``I want a Soviet government,'' he replies to his father's question as to what side he is on (2, 352). Pantelei Prokofyevich, that firm limb of the Cossack law, explodes with anger, while Pyotr energetically tries to talk him round. The comfortable life at home ( Sholokhov chooses his moment well to give an account of a fine spread in the Melekhov house) with its regular settled routine, the artless delight of the family when, yielding to Natalya's entreaties, he wears his officer's tunic and his crosses (``'You look like a colonel!' Pyotr exclaimed in delight'') is irresistibly pleasant to Grigory, and awakens all his class and property feelings.
These new feelings first burst forth shortly before the execution of Podtyolkov. The Cossack hierarchy are leading the Cossacks against Soviet power, against the Red Guard detachments retreating from the Ukraine. The White officers mobilise the Cossacks in many districts of the Don Province. Mikhail Koshevoi, Knave, Christonya and Grigory gather at Ivan Kotlyarov's house. Mikhail and Knave propose that they go and join the Reds. Ivan Kotlyarov hesitates, for he has his family to think of. Grigory angrily opposes the idea, and when Knave went on to insist that they ought to leave, angrily cut him short: ``Not so fast! Your position is different, there's nothing to keep you, you can go where you like! But we've got to think it over carefully. I've got a wife and _-_-_
^^*^^ Ibid., p. 510.
62 two little children.... You can wag your tongue, you whipper-snapper! You're just what you've always been. You've got,; nothing but your jacket to your name....'' (2, 421--422). These are the haughty, angry vituperations of the Cossack with his own farm for whom the homeless, unfortunate Knave does not merit even the most basic human respect. It is significant here that the main pretext Grigory gives for not leaving is that he has his homestead and family to think of.Grigory had not wished to leave and join the Reds. Instead he fought for anti-revolutionary forces of the Don Army. Deceived by slogans calling for autonomy for the Don region the Cossacks rose against Soviet power.
Grigory's views undergo a sharp change at this point. He believes that he is fighting to defend the Cossack lands from the encroachments of the Tambov, Ryazan and Saratov muzhiks led by the Bolsheviks. Angered against the Bolsheviks he considers the counter-- revolutionary struggle perfectly justified. But he sees that the majority of the Cossacks are little disposed to fight and are prepared to adopt a conciliatory attitude.
The Red Army struck the Cossacks some hard blows and by the autumn of 1918 the front defended by ataman Krasnov's whiteguard army was beginning to collapse. Whole groups of Cossacks deserted their detachments and returned home to wait uneasily on their farms for the arrival of the Red Army. Grigory also deserted and stayed on in the village to await further developments. It was not long before the Red Army was passing through Tatarsky, pursuing the fleeing White forces, and Soviet power was once more established on the Don.
Everything that was fermenting inside Grigory, seething beneath the surface, was to burst forth in his conversation with Ivan Alexeyevich Kotlyarov, now Chairman of the village Revolutionary Committee. This frank confession was the result of long, painful meditations. The conversation revealed all Grigory's inner contradictions, his inability to overcome his property and class interests. It represents a most important point on his tortuous path, throwing much light on his future, explaining a great deal.
One winter's evening Grigory dropped in at the headquarters of the District Revolutionary Committee, and 63 there ensued one of those scenes which Sholokhov handles so masterfully, where he brings characters together in a dramatic situation in which they naturally reveal to the reader many important features of their nature. In this case Sholokhov has brought together three old friends. Not so long before Grigory and Ivan Alexeyevich had refused to go off and join the Reds, giving the excuse that they had their families to think of. But even at the time Ivan Alexeyevich had had an uneasy sensation that he was not acting according to the dictates of his conscience. He guessed that with Grigory it was something else.... At the assembly that was held after the Reds came to the village, Grigory met Ivan Alexeyevich and his old friend Mikhail Koshevoi. Mikhail had worked as a drover and then been drafted into a disciplinary company, where he had been kept under close surveillance to prevent him from joining the Bolsheviks. The day before the Whites had abandoned the village Ivan Alexeyevich had gone out to meet the Reds and had come into the village with them. Grigory had deserted his regiment, staying on at home. ``How is it you stayed behind, Grigory?" Ivan Alexeyevich had asked, his friendly tone betraying sincere concern for Grigory. ``And how about you?" was Grigory's answer. ``Thinking of my commission? I risked it and stayed on here. I nearly got killed yesterday.... I was sorry I hadn't cleared out. But now I'm not sorry....''
``We should have cleared off to the Reds when we had the chance. We wouldn't be looking so silly now if we had,'' Ivan Alexeyevich added (3, 189). He had understood his mistake and was trying to make amends for it. But it has not even crossed Grigory's mind that he had chosen a dangerous, slippery path right back at the time of Podtyolkov's execution.
Now, in January 1919, Grigory meets Ivan Alexeyevich and Mikhail Koshevoi with his ideas already matured. He speaks directly, with an almost desperate frankness, for Kotlyarov and Koshevoi are as yet people in whom he can confide, and he may even be secretly hoping that they might be in sympathy with his views. Grigory asks Ivan Alexeyevich what the Bolsheviks are giving the Cossacks. ``Are they giving us the land? Or liberty? Are they making everyone equal? We've got enough land 64 to choke ourselves with already. And we don't want any more liberty or we'll be knifing each other in the streets. We used to elect our own atamans, but now they're set over us. This government will bring the Cossacks nothing but ruin. It's a peasants' government, and we don't need it. And we don't need the generals either. The Communists and the generals are all alike: they're all yokes on our necks" (3, 210--211).
Grigory had become a firm supporter of Cossack separatism. He tries to substantiate the idea of the special position of the Cossacks as a class apart, united in their outlook and aspirations.
Ivan Alexeyevich is a simple, semi-literate Cossack, groping his way towards the great social truth of life, following what his heart tells him to be right. He answers Grigory with firm conviction:
``~`The rich Cossacks don't need it, but how about the others? You fool! There are three rich Cossacks in the village, and how many poor? And what will you do with the labourers? No, we can't take your view of it. Let the rich Cossacks give up a bit of their own wealth and pass it on to the poor. And if they won't, we'll take it, with their flesh as well! We've had enough of their lording it over us! They stole the land.'
``'Not stole it, but conquered it. Our forefathers poured out their blood for it, and maybe that's why the earth is so fruitful....'"
It is significant that Grigory should try to find an explanation and justification for the special class position of the Cossacks by referring to those far-off days. For the autonomists glossed over the present social class structure of Cossack life with legends of the past. Ivan Alexeyevich makes short work of Grigory's arguments: ``That doesn't make any difference; they must share it with those who need it. But you---you're like the weathercock on a roof. You turn with the wind. Such men as you cause trouble" (3, 211).
Ivan Alexeyevich, who had opposed the imperialist war at the front and raised a Cossack squadron against Kornilov, and was thus not without political experience, faces Grigory with the simple fact that the Cossacks do not constitute a single class. ``There are all sorts of Cossacks,'' he points out.
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