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1

p In 1925 Sholokhov left Moscow and returned to his native Don region. From that time forth his whole life was to be dedicated to writing.

p 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.

p 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.

p 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.

p 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.

p “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.   [25•* 

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p From 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.

p 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.

p 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.

p 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.

p 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.”

p 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.

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p “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.”  [27•* 

p 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".

p 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.

p 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.

p A careful reading of the present fourth part leads one to the conclusion that Grigory Melekhov was most 28 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.

p 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—"

p 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....

p 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.

p Sholokhov worked on the first two volumes of And Quiet Flows the Don from 1925 to 1928.

p 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.

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p Almost 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.

p Stefan Zweig, himself one of the finest writers of our age, spoke in 1928 of what struck him so about Gorky.

p “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.”  [29•* 

p 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?

p From a careful reading we get the impression that 30 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.

p 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".

p “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.”  [30•* 

p 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.

p 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.

p 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 31 and attempted to reveal the guiding principles which lay behind the Revolution, and show how they affected every aspect of life.

p 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.

p 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.

p 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.

p 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.

p “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.”  [31•*  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.

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p Sholokhov presented to Gorky a copy of the first book of Virgin Soil Upturned with a very warm and friendly inscription.

p 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.

2

p 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’.”   [32•* 

p Sholokhov finished the first two volumes in 1927 and the novel began to appear in the earlier numbers of the magazine Oktyabr in 1928.

p 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 33 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.”  [33•* 

p 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.

p 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.

p 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.

p 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.

p 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.

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p Book 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).

p 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.

p 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.

p 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!"  [34•* 

p 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.

p After a painstaking study of a mass of data Sholokhov ventured to explain the causes of the revolt.

p 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 35 up due to opposition from leading members of the RAPP.  [35•* 

p 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.

p 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.

p 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.

p “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:

p “’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!’

p “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 36 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....”

p 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:

p “Now for a few remarks about the uprising:

p “1. It arose as a result of exaggerated encroachments on the interests of the middle-peasant Cossacks.

p “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.

p “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—

p “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.

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p “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....

p “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.”  [37•* 

p 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.

p 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.

p The inability to feel and comprehend events in their historical perspective inevitably leads to the distortion of the essence of those events.

p 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".

p The truth can only be found through a concrete historical analysis of all the causes and results of a given event.

p 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.

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p “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.... "  [38•* 

p 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.

p 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.

p 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.

p 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.

p 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, 39 character grouping, the individual fortunes of his heroes-through various means at a writer’s disposal.

p 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.

3

p “Everything had existed long since in rough,” he later said, “but I was constantly reworking it.”  [39•* 

p 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.

p 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.

p “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.”

p 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.

p “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.”  [39•** 

p With reference to the socio-historical significance of Grigory Melekhov’s vicissitudes, Sholokhov insistently warned:

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p “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.”  [40•* 

p 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.

p 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.

p “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.”  [40•** 

p 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.

p 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.

p 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,”  [40•***  Sholokhov said.

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p But 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.

p 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....

p 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.

p 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.

p In 1939 Sholokhov mentioned in the course of an interview: “I shall definitely finish it in February.”  [41•*  And indeed the eighth and last part of the novel was published in Nos. 2 and 3 of Novy Mir for 1940.

p 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.

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p The 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.

p 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.

p 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.

p 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.

p “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,”  [42•*  Gorky wrote to Fedin.

p This lofty conception of honest, unconstrained art certainly applies to Sholokhov’s novel, which is imbued with love and respect for the working man.

p 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 43 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.”  [43•* 

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.