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How “The Quiet Don” Began

85 years ago, in January of 1928, the journal “Oktyabr” began publishing the first book of the novel “The Quiet Don” by M.A.Sholokhov.

As far back as 1925, A.S.Serafimovich having read the first book of short stories by Mikhail Sholokhov said very warm words to the young writer: ”It’s so well done!.. Your book is not big– there are only eight stories, but the events they comprise are enough for a novel. It’s very important for a writer to find his way while he is still young… To venture for a greater work! I do feel you’ve got strong   enough!”

Sholokhov “ventured”. When in Karghinskaya, working over his short stories he conceived an idea about writing a big work about the Don Cossacks. At that time and later, in Vyoshenskaya, the writer studied the books about the war of 1914 – 1918, he read books by Soviet military experts and historians, the memoirs of Denikin, Lukomsky, Krasnov, which had been sent to him by E.G.Levitskaya, a publisher, studied collected documents, worked hard in the archives of Moscow, Rostov-on-Don and Novocherkassk. Sholokhov was known to have read books about the history of the death of General Samsonov’s army in East Prussia (1914), about Brusilov Offensive in Galicia (1916), a book by Zayonchkovsky “The World War of 1914 – 1918” (1925), books by N.Kakurin, A.Frenkel, N.Yanchevsky, I.Kalinin and many others.

“I got down to “The Quiet Don” when I was twenty, in 1925. At first being interested in the tragic history of the Russian revolution I paid my attention to General Kornilov. He headed the well-known revolt of 1917. And according to his instructions General Krymov marched to Petrograd to overthrow the Provisional Government of Kerensky.

Within a year and a half or two, I wrote 6–8 printed sheets… then I felt something was going wrong. A reader, even a Russian reader, didn’t know, in fact, what the Don Cossacks were. There was a story “Cossacks” by Tolstoy, but it was about the life of the Terek Cossacks. In fact, there has been no work about the Don Cossacks. The mode of life of the Don Cossacks is quite different from that of the Kuban Cossacks let alone those of the Terek, so I thought I was to begin with description of the Don Cossack family way of life. So, I stopped the work begun in 1925 to take to depicting the Melekhovs family, and then so it went… (From the talk of M.A.Sholokhov with the students of Upsala University, Sweden, in December, 1965).

The plan of the great book took final shape in the first years of the writer’s life in Vyoshenskaya. There all the material was at hand: Vyoshenskaya is a former centre of the anti-Bolshevik uprising in the Upper Don region. Those events of 1919 were depicted neither in the historical literature, nor in fiction. Sholokhov settled for living among his countrymen. He worked hard, travelled a lot, looked   for books, periodicals of those years, military maps, met with old residents of the Cossack villages. Of the utmost importance for the author were meetings with real participants in the events, especially with Kharlampy Yermakov, one of the main prototypes of Grigory Melekhov in the novel.

“The Quiet Don” by Mikhail Sholokhov is impossible to imagine without the colourful variety of folk Cossack songs. The book “sounds” with children’s, lyrical, soldier’s, dancing and historic songs. The writer clarified some of the song lyrics according to “The Don Cossack Songs” by A.Pivovarov (Novocherkassk, 1885),”Collection of the Don Folk Songs” by A.Saveliyev (S.-Petersburg, 1866), and the writer himself knew the most part of the songs and sang them very correctly in trips, among his family, at rest.

In February, 1927, Sholokhov negotiated with the publishing house “Moskovsky Rabochy”about publishing his novel, then, on his friends’ advice he took his manuscript to Goslitizdat, where it was rejected as a thing ”praising the Cossacks”,”idealizing the Cossack life”. In the editorial office of journal “Oktyabr” the author was reproached for a big amount and prolixity of the work, and the publication was agreed only provided a significant reduction. And only after Alexander Serafimovich, the “Oktyabr” editor-in-chief, who was the most authoritative organizer of the young Soviet literature, read the manuscript of the novel and ordered to publish it without any reductions, the fate of the work was solved. In spite of the procrastinations of the overcautious editorial staff, the persistence of Serafimovich and his belief in the talent of young Sholokhov overcame all the obstacles.

The January issue of “Oktyabr” of 1928 opened a new great page of the home culture: “Mikhail Sholokhov. ”The Quiet Don”. Part One”. Within January and February the journal editorial office received thousands of letters with readers’ excited response. In foreign countries Sholokhov was called New Tolstoy and ranked among Gogol, Turgenev and Dostoevsky. He was highly praised by A.V.Lunacharsky and A.M.Gorky.

So there began the life of one of our readers’ most favourite works, a unique epic novel about the life of the Don Cossacks, about the fate of  Russia in the years of the First World war, two revolutions and the Civil war.

The writer’s wife, Mariya Petrovna, recalled : ”In the spring of 1926, Mikhail Alexandrovich said to me :”You know, my dear, short stories are only a run, a trial of strength…But I want to write a great work, a novel. I want to show Cossacks in the revolution. The plan has already been laid out. I am to get to work. So, let’s go home, Masha… It will be easier for me there to breathe and write”.

The Sholokhovs returned to Karghinskaya, and later they moved to Stanitsa Bukanovskaya. “We rented an apartment in the house of blacksmith Dolgov. …The smiths are forging behind the wall, while Misha is sitting at the table and writing the first pages of “The Quiet Don”… In the autumn of 1926, we moved to Vyoshki, where the first books of the novel were completed”, - Mariya Petrovna recollected.

Once Sholokhov was asked if there were other variants of the novel beginning, and he answered:” I began at once just the way it goes in the book…” He clearly said : ”The Melekhovs’ farmyard is at the very far end of the village. The wicket from the cattle enclosure leads northward to the Don. A steep eight sazhen slope between mossy greenish chalky boulders – and here is the bank…

This was the rise of the grand novel of the Great Russian writer. A difficult and unique destiny was in store for the writer and his books…

Serghey Gribanov