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The Writer’s Mother is the Highest Title of Hers

This year Anastasiya Danilovna Sholokhova, the mother of Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov, turns 140.

Anastasiya Danilovna was born in 1871 in a village of Yasenovka (which is 15 km south from Vyoshenskaya, 10 km west from Kruzhilin Village) to a poor family of late serf peasants.

From the beginning of the XIX century the Chernikovs lived in Yasenovka and worked for the Popovs landowners: her father, Danila, was a gardener, her mother, Akulina, laundered the linen for their masters. There were three children in the Chernikovs’ family. Their sons, Gherasim and Gavrila, having made their families lived detached in Yasenovka, too. The only daughter Nastya from 12 years of age served for the Popovs masters.

Danila Alexandrovich died in 1893. Akulina and Nastya remained living in the masters’ estate. Nastya was slender and smart to beautify the masters’ house, she was a neat and industrious housemaid. On her relatives’ persuasion she was married to a Cossack Kuznetsov from Stanitsa Elanskaya, but her marriage was not happy. Her husband, much older than her, often beat Nastya and she preferred to return to the service for the Popovs.

In Yasenovka Anastasiya made acquaintance with Alexander Mikhailovich Sholokhov, who visited the Popovs on business, and this acquaintance settled her destiny. Alexander Mikhailovich took Anastasiya to his home in Kruzhilin Village as a housekeeper and she showed herself to be a clever and good manager.

In 1905 the son Mikhail was born to Anastasiya Danilovna and Alexander Mikhailovich.

The parents of the would-be-writer were not married, as Anastasiya’s first husband was alive, and divorces were unacceptable by the church. And only after Kuznetsov’s death in 1913 their wedding took place and Misha was adopted by his own father.

Anastasiya was very fond of Misha. Because of him she learned reading and writing: when her son went to school in a town of Boguchar, his mother wanted to read his letters and answer them on her own.

A.S. Serafimovich recollected, that Anastasiya Danilovna possessed a vivid, figurative speech, she was a good story-teller, she knew many songs and fairy tales, and she must have handed down to her son “the heritage of being a great artist”.

Being reticent when speaking about his private life M.A. Sholokhov recollected, how his mother once saved him from death: “It was a real Russian woman, strong, steady, of a great moral power. I remember, once, in the time of the Civil war, when I was 14, White Cossacks rushed into the stanitsa. They sought after me as a Bolshevik. “I don’t know, where my son is”, - my mother repeated. Then a Cossack on horseback struck her a violent whip blow on her back. She moaned falling down, but still repeating “I don’t know anything, son, I don’t know anything…”

After the decease of Alexander Mikhailovich in 1925 Anastasiya Danilovna lived with her son’s family. She kept the house and nursed her grandchildren.

M.A. Sholokhov embodied a number of remarkable traits of his mother in the personages of his works (for instance, Iliyinichna in the novel “And Quiet Flows the Don”).

On July, 8, 1942, Anastasiya Danilovna perished during the bombardment of Stanitsa Vyoshenskaya and was buried in the yard of the Sholokhovs’ house. After the war she was reburied at the stanitsa’s cemetery.

Nataliya Kirsanova