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The Jubilee of the Famous Sholokhov’s Speech

On October, 6, it is the 80^th anniversary of the day when young but famous M.A.Sholokhov made his speech “Literature is a Part of the Proletarian Cause” before the best workers of the Lenin Plant and the Railway Junction of Rostov-on-Don.

The meeting with the workers took place a month after the end of the first All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers, where M.A.Sholokhov was a delegate. The congress discussed questions of the world artistic literature and the national literature of the republics, development of the Soviet dramaturgy, poetry, literature for children and youth and the work with young writers.

Telling the Rostov workers about the resolutions of the congress M.A.Sholokhov noted the cultural growth of the Soviet readers, what was confirmed by hundreds of letters. The readers analyzed the works of the writers including Sholokhov himself and assessed their quality.

M.A.Sholokhov shared his opinion with the workers that if a writer gives his product of a poor quality, he must be responsible for it in the same way as a worker producing spoilage. It is necessary to do so that the voice of the working readers should become a decisive voice. But on the other hand, a writer mustn’t be approached to with disproportionate requirements; after all, no writer is able to cover all of the events in their versatility. He needs to keep up with the events, keep up with the times.

Mikhail Alexandrovich was so much troubled about the question of writing quality that he mentioned it many times while speaking. He noted that the Congress of Writers determined the improvement in the artistic quality of literature and mastery of writers to be the most important task. Sholokhov underlined: ”We do a poor work, our work over the language is not enough.” And then: “Aspiring writers can hardly learn on our works, if they can, ...and we are greatly responsible for their development”.

In his speech M.A.Sholokhov touched another question of great importance, a necessity of deep knowledge of the material. He gave an example how some authors write about life and production knowing neither life, nor production. Completing his speech the writer noted: to achieve a high quality of a literary writing the author needs a close contact established between the working readers and Soviet writers.

One of the episodes of M.A.Sholokhov meeting in Rostov with the best workers of the Lenin Plant and the Railway Junction was shown by G.Dolzhansky, the press photographer for the newspaper “Leninets”.

Larisa Bukina