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The Writer Mikhail Alexeyev is 95

On the 29^th of November, 2013, we mark the 95^th anniversary of Mikhail Nikolayevich Alexeyev, the well-known Russian writer, winner of the International M.A.Sholokhov Prize, a novelist and publicist.

For long years Mikhail Alexeyev had been a friend of M.A.Sholokhov, who, at the forum of the South Russian writers in 1962, highly appreciated his novel “Cherry Pool”: “A clever book. Alexeyev knows how to get to the very core. He takes a deep ploughing.”

In the book stores of the Museum-Reserve of M.A.Sholokhov there is a book by Mikhail Alexeyev “Cherry Pool. Divisional Newspaper. Heirs. Bread is a Noun” with an autograph: “To my dear Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov – with excitement and joyful fright. Mikh. Alexeyev. 23.VII/64.Vyoshki.”

Mikhail Alexeyev visited Sholokhov in Stanitsa Vyoshenskaya two times: in 1964, at the meeting of the writer with the Kirov Plant workers and in 1967, in the delegation of young writers of the USSR, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Colombia and Germany. Later he came to Stanitsa Vyoshenskaya after the death of Mikhail Alexandrovich to join the all-Russian literary and folklore festival “Sholokhov Spring”.

The writers got acquainted in Moscow, in Sholokhov’s flat in Starokonyushenny Lane, where Alexeyev came together with the poet Serghei Vasiliyev.

“Vasiliyev lingered about for some reason, and Sholokhov and I were in the lift together, – Mikhail Nikolayevich recalled. – How long the way to the fourth floor seemed to me! I hid my eyes not daring to look up at the most favourite writer. He also seemed to feel something like embarrassment. Maybe that’s why he said at the door of his flat: “And you, my namesake, don’t confuse me any more with your confusion!” And the stone moved away from my heart. Now I felt easier.”

The pages devoted to M.A.Sholokhov are the best pages of Alexeyev as an essayist, critic and memoirist. In his article “The Great Resident of the Stanitsa” Mikhail Alexeyev wrote:

“The words fail to describe the feelings overwhelming you any time you come to Sholokhov country. Just like a bright and warm cloud embraces your soul, and you can look but with a deep emotion at that golden eagle cutting the air with the slanting blades of his rainbow wings and at those steppe mounds thoughtfully grown quiet, and at that velvety and silvery wormwood, and particularly at that distant curving stripe of the river with its beaches and shingle kissed a lot by the waves, at the famous stream of the Don, where on a remote foggy morning mischievous Grishka together with his strict and obstinate father fished fat carps, at that sad path steeply running down to the river, that very path, which the beautiful and unhappy Aksiniya would walk by. All these is the world of Sholokhov’s images, the world which is real and at the same time fantastically extraordinary.”

Elena Kleimenova