News

News

The Patriot of the Don Country

Till now, in the native country of the great writer Mikhail Sholokhov everything is inspired with him, his work, his deeds. Everyone here knows that if there was a need to help a man, to support a matter of great concern, to defend the truth, Sholokhov applied to the highest instances.

Mikhail Alexandrovich was said once to possess “a sunny love for people, for the native country”. It is this love that embodies his civil and his writer’s image.

Speaking in 1937 for the electors, the workers of the Novocherkassk steam-engineering plant, the candidate of the USSR Supreme Soviet Deputy M.A. Sholokhov said: “It is a sacred duty to love the Country that has reared and brought us up like mother… I was born and grew up on the Don, went to school, developed as a person and as a writer. And being a patriot of my great, powerful Country I am proud to say that I am also a patriot of my Don land”.

He, chosen by people, was asked for assistance by thousands of people, he had to settle different problems. What a great many letters and petitions signed by the Deputy Sholokhov were sent to different instances! In Kamensk-Shakhtinskiy, near the bus station, the town first car repair service shop still works, which was set up owing to the assistance of Mikhail Alexandrovich. He interceded for apportioning machines, bitumen, fuel-lubricating materials, industrial equipment for enterprises of Millerovo, he assisted in building here a new school, in laying the roads with asphalt in opening the biggest in the South of Russia Millerovo dairy manufacture. He constantly asked the First Secretary of the town Communist Party Committee V.T. Logachov: “How do the residents of Millerovo live, what do they need?”

Mikhail Alexandrovich considered the vocation of the writer, the purport of his labour to be his responsibility for people, for humanity. He had never differentiated between the work of writer and social work.

Sholokhov not only spoke for the agricultural workers of his native Stanitsa Vyoshenskaya, about the necessity of holding a short-term sowing campaign, not only called the regional gardeners and viticulturists for covering the Don banks with orchards and vineyards, but also travelled about the fields and farms going into details of the agricultural labour. In the sovkhoz named after the writer a well-known Edilbaev sheep breed is reared, which appeared on the Don, when the writer’s friends from West Kazakhstan on his request sent fifty thoroughbred animals.

The forests of the Upper Don, the purest water supply from the Otrog spring, modern schools, hospitals, kindergartens, a teacher training college bearing the writer’s name, a sanatorium “Vyoshenskiy”, the teleretransmitter in Kalininskiy Village, the Palace of Culture, a beautiful bridge over the Don River – all these is the issue of Sholokhov’s deputy work. His active participation is felt on the Don in all his great deeds. The Don Scientific Research Experimental station in Vyoshenskaya, the North-Caucasian Scientific Centre of the High Education in Rostov, a textile enterprise in Shakhti, the Starocherkassk Historical Architectural Museum-Reserve were open under the assistance of Sholokhov as well.

Our region is called Sholokhov country. Our favourite Man and Writer is again with us today. As always we consult with him, discuss our sore subjects, share our inmost thoughts. And the holiday of “Sholokhov Spring” annually gathering in the native land of Mikhail Alexandrovich thousands of admirers of his talent, his great work for the sake of people, is a tribute of high respect for the great countryman for all he had done for his native Don land.

Serghey Gribanov