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Old Country Life Holiday

Kruzhilin Village, a homeland of the great Russian writer, on September, 8, attracted the admirers of the art of Mikhail Sholokhov and connoisseurs of the old life of the Don Cossacks. In the Cossack farmstead of the Museum-Reserve a literary-ethnographic holiday “Kruzhilin Gathering was held. Sholokhov’s countrymen and numerous guests from the Rostov, Voronezh, Volgograd and other regions of Russia, as well as the workers of the most well-known museum-reserves - “Mikhailovskoye“ of A.S.Pushkin, ”Karabikha” of N.A.Nekrasov, “Abramtsevo” of S.A.Esenin, Novgorod United Museum-Reserve, Novorossiysk Historical Museum, were transported to 100 years ago. The holiday is known in foreign countries, as some tourists from Germany came to join it.

The participants of the event were warmly greeted by the director of the State M.A.Sholokhov Museum-Reserve A.M.Sholokhov; the head of the Environment Protection Department of the Committee for Environment Protection and Natural Resources of the Rostov Region, M.V.Parashchenko; the deputy director of the Russian D.S.Likhachov Research Institute of Cultural and Natural Heritage, A.V.Eremeyev; Ph.D., director of the North-Caucasian High Education Scientific Centre of the South Federal University, M.D.Rozin; the deputy head of the Sholokhov District Administration, S.G. Bashtura; the head of the Kruzhilin rural settlement, M.V.Nikulin.

Village gathering is an old good tradition to help the neighbours. It is both a labour and a holiday. In the theatrical performance the workers of the Sholokhov Museum-Reserve showed traditional Cossack rites: how they admitted to Cossacks, forgave an offender, “took under the cloak”, allotted the meadow plots.

Then the public was introduced a living illustration of Sholokhov’s “The Quiet Don“: all the village Cossacks went out for the hayfield, with colourful dresses of the Cossack women making it a bright picture, the Melekhovs family doing their farmwork and their neighbour Aksiniya looking “indifferently and strictly” at Grigory.

Some people wanted to try themselves in mowing, ploughing on oxen. Seeing how skillfully the writer’s grandson managed the work a representative of the beautiful half of the humanity decided to join and try herself in ploughing. In the farmyard the villagers were busy winnowing grain, grinding flour, cooking Cossack dinner. The fast dinner of tasty kulesh, noodles, pancakes and aromatic herbal tea was followed by festivities.

The masters of Kruzhilin and the Museum-workers shared their secrets of weaving networks, wood carving, painting wooden spoons and clay plates. Boys learned to make pottery, girls showed their interest in wheel spinning, churning. Each member of the festival got a souvenir.

Children and adults rode on horseback, took part in old Cossack games, sang songs and danced together with the performers of the favourite group “Zarnitsa” and the children group ”Zorenka” of the State M.A.Sholokhov Museum-Reserve and other groups from Rostov, Voronezh regions and other parts of Russia.

The guests enjoyed the beautiful, merry and hospitable holiday and took with them souvenirs, lots of photos, fine impressions and desired to come here again.

“Kruzhilin Gathering” is one of the projects of the State M.A.Sholokhov Museum-Reserve aimed at maintaining the cultural and historical heritage of the Upper Don, tourism development and creation a living textbook of history and literature, a solid bridge between the present and the past. Next autumn the Museum-Reserve will gather people in Kruzhilin again to meet with the personages of Sholokhov’s books, and each of the holiday members will be able to make his own entry into the unique Open Air Novel.

Tatiyana Nektova