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1

p Virgin Soil Upturned is remarkable for its perfect composition, and the natural manner in which the dunamic plot is constructed. The characters are masterfully arrayed from the very start with the classical clarity of a chess composition, and one is immediately struck by the depth of the author’s penetration into the philosophy of the age, and by the socio-historical and psychological authenticity. There is perfect cohesion and dynamic interaction, nothing is superfluous. In the foreground the group of Communists with Davidov at their head stands out sharp and clear; Polovtsev and Ostrovnov lurk in the shadows; Kondrat Maidannikov looms large in the turbulent village crowd....

p The hero of And Quiet Flows the Don was Grigory Melekhov, whose life embodied the doubts and vacillation of millions of “the semi-petty bourgeois and petty bourgeois masses”. In its extreme form this wavering was their downfall.

p In Virgin Soil Upturned the spotlight is on the Communists affirming the new life and people like the middle peasant Kondrat Maidannikov whose whole life had prepared him for accepting collectivisation as a vital necessity.

p During the Civil War Kondrat had fought with the Red Army. His old worn cavalry cap which he hasn’t the heart to part with tells us more of his past than any words.

p Kondrat Maidannikov’s doubts and wavering are not expressed in his actions (he is among the first to join the collective farm), but in his inner struggle to overcome that “sneaking regret" for his own property.

p Naturally Sholokhov saw, knew and understood that the majority of those who doubted and hesitated during collectivisation were middle peasants. The dramatic “flux 300 and reflux" was connected with this section of the peasantry. But as a writer and thinker Sholokhov went further and deeper in appreciating the nature of the historical conflict.

p Sholokhov’s attention was drawn to the fundamental aspect of the period, which was “how the property-owner voluntarily gave up his scrap of land".

p The conflict became an inner, spiritual one. The struggle between reason and prejudice in Kondrat’s heart revealed the mighty historic significance of what was happening throughout the countryside. Sholokhov showed how joining the collective farm was but the first stage in the painful birth of the new.

p This indeed was one of the central ideas of the novel, an idea which is developed with deep psychological penetration—the drama of parting with property, cardinal changes in life, and decisive turning points.

p Kondrat Maidannikov is a generalised figure. The ordinary, inconspicuous Cossack from Gremyachy Log who was sharp and aware enough to recognise in himself the “cursed hankering" after property and struggled against it with all his might, was thereby performing a historic feat and raising himself to the level of those heroes of literature who can serve as an example and a model....

p The individual struggled with himself in order to better and ennoble himself, to bring his own life into line with the historical aims of society—such is the wider significance of Kondrat Maidannikov, testifying to Sholokhov’s profound understanding of the essential nature of the social conflicts of the time.

p Kondrat has no doubts about the collective farm being the only way to bring about a better life. His doubts come later, and not from the fear that he and his family will be worse off in the collective farm. He is worried about something quite different as he lies in bed at night unable to sleep: “What would it be like in the collective farm? Would everyone feel and understand, as he understood, that this was the only way, that there was no going back?... And what if everybody gives it up after a week because they’re afraid of the snags? Then I’ll say good-bye to Gremyachy for good, and go off to the mines. We’ll have nothing left to live on here" (1, 91).

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p If collectivisation failed it would be a personal disaster for Kondrat, dashing so many hopes.

p This understanding of the historic importance of collectivisation is one of the essential features of Kondrat Maidanriikov’s nature. This is indeed what sets him apart somewhat from the average middle peasant he is supposed to typify. It was only after much doubt and hesitation that the middle peasants came to identify the general historical interest with their own.

p Nikita Morgunok from Tvardovsky’s poem The Land of Muravia typifies the attitude of this section of the peasantry. He dreams of the peasant land of Muravia, where:

p “The land from end to end, it all
Belongs to you—”

p It is only much later, after having gone through all sorts of trials and seen his former dreams and ideals shattered that Nikita Morgunok finally decides to join the kolkhoz.

p Kondrat Maidannikov is a different, new type of peasant. Educated by years of revolutionary struggle, he has come to understand the indestructible connection between his own destiny and that of the whole country that was building socialism, feeling the general interest to be his own. He is set apart by the way he thinks on a nation-wide scale, something which was later developed by Sholokhov with a great wealth of motifs in the characters of his novel They Fought for Their Fatherland.

p Kondrat thinks and worries a lot about the initial difficulties in getting the collective farm going and comes to the conclusion that the biggest danger to the new life is “a sneaking regret" for one’s own property. He himself is unable to suppress it entirely. He is oppressed by it in the silence of the night and it will not let him rest; it creeps up on him when he is on duty in the collectivefarm stables, and he gives “his own" horse the best hay; when “his” horse’s neck is rubbed by the yoke, he “can’t eat the whole day afterwards".

p Sholokhov shows that the thing is not only a property “instinct” that has built up over the generations. The psychological explanation will be found in the actual circumstances of Kondrat’s life. Kondrat collected his 302 modest property at the cost of tremendous toil, and selfdenial for himself and his family. Ho himself guesses the reason for his “cursed hankering": “It’s all hecause it was so hard to get what we had. I reckon people that were up to their eyes in wealth wouldn’t feel it so bad" (1, 171).

p One of the secrets of great art is the authenticity that comes from direct, personal knowledge. You, the reader, “alone” are privileged to be offered an insight into the secrets of another person’s life. This is very true of Sholokhov’s art.

p Sholokhov gives us a very full picture of Kondrat Maidannikov’s life, his everyday interests, his dreams and hopes. We feel the author’s sympathy and concern as well as his deep understanding of the inner world of the peasant toiler.

p We are told how difficult Kondrat’s life had been. Kondrat with his one poor nag really knew what poverty was. He could not wait for his cow to calve. “How many times of a cold night had Kondrat woken up as if someone had shaken him, and, pushing his feet into his boots, run out to the stable in only his underpants to see if the cow was calving. The frosts were bitter and the calf might get frozen as soon as its mother had licked it clean...” (1, 90). The bull grew up and worked for Kondrat “in summer and winter cold”. When the time came to drive the bull to the collective farm his heart bled, and he wept, finding relief in tears.

p With one short remark the author seems to sum up all Kondrat has suffered and experienced: “Collective farming did not come easy to Kondrat. With tears and blood he tore apart the belly-cord that bound him to his property, his bull, his scrap of land" (1, 92).

p Yet however much Kondrat’s heart might ache for his own property, however difficult he might find it to get rid of his “cursed hankering" after his horse or his bull, he gradually becomes more and more concerned for the collective-farm property.

p “But none of the horses belong to other people now, they’re all ours,” he says, thereby expressing his new concern for common property as for his own.

p Kondrat transfers all his zeal to the collective-farm work, making everything his business and never 303 missing the slightest lapse, lie not only notices that the litter for the horses is used wastcfully—there’s enough to feed the shcop and the goats—but gets Davidov to cancel Oslrovnov’s sabotaging instructions. He notes that Kuzhenkov leaves the watering of the horses to young boys who drive them back before they have drunk their fill. He is quite prepared to fight Atamanchuk for not ploughing deep enough and, moreover, going out in the rain, when it can do the oxen irreparable harm. “I won’t let you harm the collective farm!" Kondrat shouts. This same personal concern for the collective farm determines all Kondrat’s actions.

p Kondrat’s concern for the welfare of the collective farm does not boil down to refusal to put up with slackness from others. He is equally demanding on himself and works so well that Davidov praises him before the whole team. The poetry of the new life bursts forth in the novel in a jubilant key. Kondrat drives his oxen into camp after dark, having worked solidly since noon, without even breaking off for a smoke. He has ploughed more that day than any of the others and his eyes are shining with the triumphant light of a man who has experienced the joy of labour for the common good. The new principles of collective labour are becoming a part of him.

p After supper Davidov thanks the farmers for their work on behalf of the management, and says that special thanks are due to Maidannikov, for “he’s been a real shock-worker”. Kondrat’s wife isn’t quite sure if that is a compliment: “It sounded like praise ... but what is it—a shock-worker?" Although he has heard the term before, Kondrat doesn’t know exactly what it means. Nevertheless he makes a brave attempt to explain. “A shock-worker? Ah, you foolish woman! A shock-worker? Hm. Well, it’s a.... How shall I put it so you’ll understand? In a rifle, for example, there’s a pin that strikes the cap of the cartridge, and the shock makes the rifle fire. That pin’s a shock-worker, you can’t fire without it. And it’s the same in a collective farm, the shock-worker is the main person in it, see? Now get to sleep and don’t come worrying me!”

p In the person of Kondrat Maidannikov Sholokhov shows us the complex and contradictory process of the 304 new socialist man being born out of the property man, of the victory of the new in the mind of the peasant toiler.

p If Kondrat is such a sharp, clear-cut character, it is in no small measure due to the way Sholokhov lets his own attitude filter through his words, thoughts and feelings.

p In Sholokhov’s action-packed, dramatic novels, the way a character speaks and expresses his thoughts is of primary importance as a revelation of his inner world.

p Kondrat Maidannikov’s thoughts about the collective farm and his family pass naturally and simply to thoughts about the whole country and the whole world. His thoughts are at first of narrow, personal, everyday matters and worries—“people don’t want to look after the horses, no one wants anything to do with them”, “mustn’t forget to tell Davidov tomorrow how Kuzhenkov watered the horses...”, “Khristina’s running about barefoot. Say what you like, but she ought to have some slippers!" He goes on to thinking about “the need the country is suffering while it carries out the five-year plan”, and addresses a wrathful speech to the workers in the West “who do not support the Communists".

p His thoughts are not a soliloquy, they are really a dialogue. His sharp reproach is at the same time a warm appeal straight from the heart: “You’ll feel ashamed, brothers....” Kondrat believes that the workers in the West that he is addressing will ally themselves with the Communists and become faithful friends of the land of the Soviets, and this is why he addresses them so. He is an inspired propagandist of the new life.

2

p In Book Two there are considerable changes both in the nature of the subject-matter and the principles on which the Cossack masses are portrayed.

p Sholokhov no longer shows the Cossacks in a crowd, or only very rarely. Unfortunately, even one of the important scenes, the open Party meeting where Kondrat Maidannikov, Agafon Dubtsov and Ippolit Shaly were admitted to membership,—a scene which might well have 305 been one of the “pivotal” episodes in the novel—did not have the impact it should have for this reason.

p Sholokhov was mainly endeavouring to deepen and give further details of that epic concept of the social processes taking place in the masses that Book One gave, and to reveal more fully the influence of the social on the moral and ethical.

p Kondrat Maidannikov is an extremely important character in Book One. It is he who helped us see into the tortured soul of the peasant, who had been attracted to join the collective farm because he was perfectly aware where his own interest lay, yet at the time was tormented by the “cursed hankering" for “his own" property. Now, in Book Two, he fades into the background, having fulfilled his artistic purpose. Book One prepares us psychologically for his admittance to the Party, Book Two merely gives us “the event".

p In Book Two Sholokhov singles out several characters who had hitherto been “dissolved” in the masses so to speak, and makes them into clear-cut striking individuals. They include: Ippolit Shaly the blacksmith—whom we already know from Book One but who is essentially revealed anew as it were—Ivan Arzhanov, and Ustin Rykalin.

p Ippolit Shaly and Ivan Arzhanov tell their stories themselves, while we learn about Rykalin’s past mainly from the words of his old relation Osetrov.

p Arzhanov and Shaly’s life accounts are like complete short-stories inserted in the narrative, and can easily stand by themselves. Yet in actual fact they are not the arbitrarily inserted stories in their own right that they seem, but are organically linked to the mainstream of the narrative by a thousand inner threads.

p Certainly, one cannot help admiring the wealth of imagination involved here. As regards the amount of action and the completeness of the character-drawing there is enough material in the story of Ivan Arzhanov’s life alone for a whole novel.

p Each of these “autobiographies” is an insight into the moral and ethical experience of the people. It is significant that they are in each case told to Davidov, thus enriching his political and life experience and his knowledge of men.

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p The past comes into the present to light up the bright goals of the future.

p A taut thread of human pride runs through the lifestories of these people from the masses, a feeling of jealously guarded human dignity.

p Sholokhov shows how by maintaining at all costs their human dignity, people from the masses, people who lead a “real” life of work, are at the same time defending the dignity of the people as a whole. He detests abject servility.

p Sholokhov is making a poetic acclamation of proud defence of one’s dignity, active refusal to submit to injustice, and readiness to stand up for the “insulted and the injured" as fine human qualities.

p The young Arzhanov watched his father’s murderers “like a young wolf watches a bird from the rushes”, waiting to have his revenge. But he was not merely blinded by passion, and longing for revenge for the fact that the men had made an orphan of him, doomed a large family to dire poverty, and placed such a tremendous burden of cares and sorrows on his young shoulders.

p His father’s parting words were: “Now listen to me, son.... You’re twelve years old now, and when I’m gone, you’ll be master here. Remember this: it was Averyan Arkhipov and his two brothers, Afanasi and cross-eyed Sergei, who beat me up. // they’d killed me straight out, I wouldn’t be holding anything against them. That’s what I asked them to do down there on the river, while I was still conscious. But Averyan said to me: ’You won’t have an easy death, you dog! You can live for a bit as a cripple and swallow as much of your own blood as you like, then you’ll die!’ That’s why I’ve got a grudge against Averyan. Death’s at my bedside, but I’ve still got a grudge against him. You’re only small now, but when you grow up, remember my sufferings, and kill Averyan!" (2, 72, author’s italics).

p Ivan kept his promise. He was not simply avenging them for killing. But for subjecting the man they killed to cruel torments, for making brutal mock of him first. It was his memory of his father’s sufferings which drove him to carry out his deed of vengeance.

p Obviously Arzhanov’s actions can be judged in various ways, but there is no overlooking the human pain in them.

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p Davidov is the first man Arzhanov has ever told the lerriblc slory that has haunted him all his life, lie knows he has found a man who will understand him.

p Davidov’s moral exigence, his keen sense of the borderline between revenge and crime are clearly expressed in his reaction when Arzhanov tells him how he shot Averyan, and mentions that he took his money.

p “‘Why did you take the money?’ Davidov snapped fiercely.

p “’Why not?’

p “’Why did you take it, I say?’

p “‘I needed it,’ Arzhanov answered simply. ’In those times poverty was gnawing at us worse than a shirtful of lice’" (2, 76).

p The direct cause of the clash between “the village proletariat”, Ippolit Shaly, and Selivanov the landowner was the former’s highly developed sense of justice which led him to stick up for the “little man" when he was being “insulted and injured".

p “I come out, and there, in a light wicker carriage, under an umbrella was Selivanov, the most famous landowner in our district, a terrible proud man, and the worst bastard the world’s ever seen.... His coachman was as white as a sheet and his hands were trembling as he unbuckled the trace from the left-side horse. He’d been careless and the horse had lost a shoe on the road. And now this landowner was pitching into him about it: ’You so and so, I’ll fire you, I’ll put you in prison, you’re making me miss my train’ and so on and so forth" (2, 163).

p The scene where the resourceful blacksmith derides the pompous sire, and completely squashes him making him quite berserk with rage, is full of typical Sholokhov humour.

p “You see, lad, he went on calling me a lout and a scoundrel and everything else under the sun, and in the end he nearly choked himself and started stamping on the floor of the carriage. ’You filthy socialist! I’ll have you gaoled!’ And in those days I didn’t know what a socialist was.... Revolution—I knew what that meant, but not ’socialist’, and I thought it must be the very worst swearword he could think of.... So I answered him: ’You’re a socialist yourself, you son-of-a-bitch,’ I says. ’Get out of here before I set about you!’" (2, 166).

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p Shaly may not have known the meaning of the word socialist and therchy made a boob, but Sclivanov grasped perfectly well the link between the man’s proud defence of human dignity and the revolutionary spirit of the masses.

p Shaly and Arzhanov’s tales are more than little windows onto the past; they revive the past as a sort of artistically palpable reality.

p There is always a subtle, significant “time link" in Sholokhov’s novels. It is worth noting how Shaly’s account of the Selivanov incident follows hard on his story of how a “responsible” district manager had come to take up lodgings with Shaly and his wife the year before.

p “...He wouldn’t speak a word, neither to her nor to me; he thought that was beneath him. He’d sit down at table—not a word. He’d get up from table—still not a word. He’d come back from the village Soviet—not a word; and when he went out again—not a word. Whatever I asked him, whether it was about politics or household matters, he would grunt: ’That’s none of your business, old man.’ And that’s as far as we got. Well, our lodger lived with us very quiet-like for three days, and on the fourth day he opened his mouth—In the morning he puffs out his chest and says to me: ’Tell your old woman to bring me my potatoes on a plate, not in a frying pan, and tell her to put some kind of napkin on the table, and not a dish towel. I’m a cultured man,’ he says, ’and what’s more, I’m a responsible worker from district headquarters and I don’t like such common ways.’

p “That put my back up proper and I says to him: ’You’re a stinking nit, not a cultured man! If you were cultured, you’d eat off what people gave you, and wipe your mug with what they gave you. ...Take your brief-case, my dear man,’ I says, ’and get out of here, because I’ve got no use for someone as stuck up as you’" (2, 154-155).

p Beneath the surface humour lies serious food for thought. Shaly’s tale was a direct hint, a “parable” for Davidov. Look at us a little closer, he seems to be saying. We’re not quite as simple as we may seem. We’re proud, and if you want to be our friend just you remember that and respect it.

p Sholokhov uses his powerful literary gift 1o convey the beauty of the people’s pride and dignity, confirmed and 309 strengthened by the revolution, and to appeal for a considerate regard for man.

p His novels are pervaded with the genius of the people, and their demanding conscience.

p At the same time these life-stories are a poetic testimony of the historic revolution in the minds of the masses.

p Arzhanov and Shaly, who are both secretive men and not without a touch of cunning, open up naturally to Davidov, “the Party man”, who had become “one of their own".

p This is at the same time testimony of the people’s trust in the leader, their faith in the nobility of the Communist’s ideas, and a profound expression of the indissoluble link between the Party and the people, which the years of the Revolution and Civil War, with all_their battles for socialism have forged.

p It was no accident that Shaly started talking to Davidov on the subject of universal responsibility.

Sholokhov is once again returning to one of the major themes of his novel—the Party and the people.