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Foreign Translators of the Russian Literature Visiting the Country of Sholokhov

On August, 31, 2010, the State M.A. Sholokhov Museum-Reserve was visited by a group of translators of the works of the Russian classics from Italy, Spain, Finland, Czechia and Mexico. All they, 16 men and women, were the participants of the International conference of translators which was held in Yasnaya Polyana on the base of the L.N. Tolstoy Museum-Reserve. Visiting Vyoshenskaya was a part of the conference cultural program supposed for learning the historic and cultural traditions, everyday life, unique heritage of the Don Cossacks, carefully preserved by the Sholokhov Museum and presented in the project “Open Air Novel”.

In the People’s House a presentation of the Museum project “Open Air Novel” was held for the guests, where the director of the State M.A. Sholokhov Museum-Reserve A.M. Sholokhov said: “I am grateful to you, literary translators, because it is owing to the translations that the works of M.A. Sholokhov became known and appreciated in the wide world and brought the highest prize to the writer – the Nobel Prize, as well as many works of the Russian writers were highly rewarded and popular abroad”.

Vitaliy Shantalinskiy (Russia) expressed a general comprehension of the fact that Sholokhov was not only a great writer, but a great man as well, who saved the Don Cossacks from annihilation and played a crucial role in protecting hundreds or even thousands of people from repressions. While studying the archive materials of the Lubyanka office V. Shantalinskiy discovered the documents telling about the “political duel” between Sholokhov and Ezhov in 1937 which was ended in the office of Stalin in the writer’s favour.

V. Shantalinskiy handed over letters of Astakhov, a Don Cossack, a friend of M.A. Sholokhov, to the Museum. In them the writer tells about his work over the novel “And Quiet Flows the Don”, other works which made him famous already in the 30-s of the previous century.

The guests visited the Museum memorial sites in the village of Kruzhikinskiy, stanitsas of Karghinskaya and Vyoshenskaya.

Next day the guests went on an excursion about the estate of M.A. Sholokhov, then they exchanged their impressions.

The guests highly appreciated the unique chance to get acquainted with the country of the Don Cossacks, places, people, traditions described in the works of M.A. Sholokhov and heartily presented in the project “Open Air Novel”.

G. Zhidkoblinova