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A Story about Alyoshka’s “Simple Heart”

85 years ago, in 1925, M. Sholokhov wrote one of his early stories – “Alyoshka’s Heart”. It was published in issue 5 of the “Peasant Youth Journal” on March, 31.

It was a story about a starveling existence and struggle for survival of a 14-year-old teenager in one of the Don villages (one can guess Stanitsa Karghinskaya) after the Civil war.

The narration is full of oppressive naturalistic scenes, but, evidently, at that time it was impossible to show the tragedy otherwise.

The story gives the first recognition of Sholokhov’s style, which further on became famous, sapid and racy, which would fully develop later in the “Quiet Flows the Don”. It’s on the one hand. And on the other – it bears a spirit of the Moscow literary group-mates of “Molodaya Gvardiya”.

Behind the lines, almost intentionally concise, one can perceive a scene of a bitter social struggle and cruel fight for a piece of bread, for life in its plain, physiological sense. And that piece of bread, which will keep Alyoshka out of starvation, will be taken from the “glass-eyed” political commissar Sinitsyn, the commander of the Red Army detachment which settled down in the stanitsa. The reader entertains no doubts about the reality of those years’ events.

In the mid 1970-s I happened to have a talk with the prototype of Alyoshka Popov – a resident of Stanitsa Karghinskaya Alexey Fyodorovich Kramskov. He, being then a 68-year-old man with big hands and a swarthy deep-wrinkled face, was reluctant and painful to recollect the years of famine.

He confirmed, that some events described in the story by Sholokhov, were real episodes from his life.

This early work of the writer entered a book of collected stories “The Don Stories” and a book of collected stories “Lazorevaya Steppe” and became one of the first steps of the would-be great writer into the big literature.

A. Kochetov