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Pine Forest in Memory of M.A. Sholokhov in Kazakhstan

In the April of 2009 the workers of the State M.A. Sholokhov  Museum-Reserve took part in the expedition on the rout of Veshenskaya – Kazakhstan – Nikolayevsk-on-the Volga, aimed at collecting new materials about M.A. Sholokhov.  In the memory of the outstanding countryman the participants in the expedition planted the Crimean pine seedings on the Volga land and in Kazakhstan.

In the town of Uralsk the Museum-Reserve workers together with the forestry specialists of the Uralsk State Office on Forest and Animal World Protection laid a pine wood on the area of 1.5 ha in memory of M.A. Sholokhov. The Veshenskaya pine seedings were also planted on the territory of the sanatorium “Akzhaiyk”, where Mikhail Alexandrovich had had a rest.

With a special feeling the expedition was expected in Dariyinskoye Village: the Sholokhovs family lived in this village during the years of the Great Patriotic war, the writer’s children went to local school, and now there is a memorial complex “The house-Museum of M.A. Sholokhov”.

In the park Druzhba (Friendship; the name is not accidental: a sculpture, symbolizing friendship between the Kazakh and Russian people is planned to be put up) there was held a meeting devoted to laying out an alley in memory of M.A. Sholokhov. The floor was taken by the head of the Zelenovskiy District Gaisa Khamidullovich Kapakov, by a friend and a comrade of Mikhail Alexandrovich – Bisen Zhumagaliyevich Zhumagaliyev, by the leader of the expedition, the deputy head on ecology and expedient land use of the Museum-Reserve Taras Yaroslavovich Turchin.

In Dariyinskiy Village there were planted about 1000 seedlings of the Crimean pine. The pupils of the local school actively participated in planting.

We visited the regional special school for children with hearing and speech disability and planted there pines, chestnuts and lilac of the sort “Mikhail Sholokhov”.

In Nikolayevsk-on-the Volga the members of the expedition attended the museum of M.A. Sholokhov, met with the schoolchildren, participants of the movement “The Sholokhov Spring”, and gifted the seedlings of the decorative cultures to the school.

In the town of Kamyshin there is a house where Mikhail Alexandrovich had lived for some time. There our museum-workers got an interesting piece of information, made some biography episodes of M.A. Sholokhov more precise.

The expedition routed through the natural park “Shcherbakovskiy”. We were amazed at the beauty of the Shcherbakovskaya gully, which had been called “The Volga Switzerland”.

Visiting the places especially important for Sholokhov, gave the museum-workers an impulse for the further research. Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov loved his people, a part of which were the people of Kazakhstan. The writer considered Kazakhstan his second native land, and the Kazakh people remember the good deeds of M.A. Sholokhov till nowadays. We believe that the friendship between the Museum-Reserve collective body and the admirers of the writer’s work in Kazakhstan and on the Volga will grow and strengthen like the green pines, planted in the memory of Mikhail Alexandrovich.

Going on expeditions to different parts of Russia has become a good tradition in the State M.A. Sholokhov Museum-Reserve. Each expedition is a meeting with the colleagues, an experience exchange, a discussion on common problems and a search for the ways of their solution. Everywhere our museum-workers came, they left the memory of Sholokhov: on the native land of Turghenev, in Spasskoye-Lutovinovo, lilac “Mikhail Sholokhov” grows. In the Tula Region on the Kulikovo Pole, the place of the well-known battle, an oak wood is restored, in the Museum-Estate of Tolstoy – “Yasnaya Polyana” there were planted 300 oak seedlings chestnut alley, in the Museum-Reserve of V.D. Polenov there is a fine lilac island and maiden grapes.

Ekaterina Kharitonova