News

News

Unknown Pages of Sholokhov’s Essay

The first publication of the essay “Prisoners of War” by M.A. Sholokhov in the newspaper “Pravda” turns 70 on November, 2.

When the Great Patriotic war broke out, a reserve regimental commissar M.A. Sholokhov was among the first to defend the Country against the fascist occupation. In July of 1941 he was called up and dispatched to the front as a war correspondent for the newspapers “Pravda”, “Krasnaya Zvezda” and for Sovinformbureau.

The newspapers started publishing war essays by M.A. Sholokhov. On November, 2, 1941, the newspaper “Pravda” published the essay “Prisoners of War”.

The Museum-Reserve researchers managed to find out, that the essay in the “Pravda”, in the foreign press of the war time and later, was published uncompleted.

In the Museum holding there is a letter of the senior scientific editor of the Publishing House of the News Press Agency S.I. Krasilshchik to Sholokhov, where he writes that among the archival materials there is found an abstract from the essay “Prisoners of War”, which was not included into its final text. “This abstract, to my mind, is of independent interest and could be published for the 40^th anniversary of the beginning of the Great Patriotic war, if you don’t mind, certainly, in the newspaper”.

The letter and the abstract were handed to the Museum in 1984 by the family of M.A. Sholokhov.

The Museum holding keeps a manuscript copy of the essay “Prisoners of War”, its original is kept in the State Archives of the Russian Federation.

Nina Noskina