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The News of the Nobel Prize Award Reached M.A.Sholokhov at Hunting

This December is the 50th anniversary of awarding M.A.Sholokhov the Nobel Prize in literature. The writer heard about his awarding the Nobel Prize on October, 15, 1965: the telegram found him in Kazakhstan when hunting at the lake of Zhaltyrkul.

A light three-seater plane was sent for M.A.Sholokhov and took him to Uralsk, where from the writer sent his answering telegram: “I sincerely thank you for the high appreciation of my literary work and awarding me the Nobel Prize, and I gratefully accept your kind invitation to arrive in Stockholm for the Nobel holiday. Mikhail Sholokhov.”

Then the writer turned back to the lake of Zhaltyrkul to resume his hunting. On October, 17, he was visited by Y.V.Lukin to interview him for the newspaper “Pravda”. When asked how he learned about the Nobel Prize awarding M.A.Sholokhov answered: “I learned about it from the telegram of the Swedish correspondents. But with some delay: this telegram was delivered to me by the Secretary of the Furmanov District Communist Party Committee, comrade Mendaliyev, who had looked for me 140 km far from the district centre. In order to answer the Royal Swedish Academy I had to fly by plane to Uralsk in rather adverse weather conditions. Generally speaking, the day of the 15 October turned auspicious for me in all respects: early in the morning I had a good work over the chapter from the first book of the novel; it was very difficult for me (Nikolay Streltsov was visited by his brother-general, whose prototype was M.F.Lukin with his life and martial affairs), in the evening I knew about the Nobel Prize award and at the evening hunt I hit two superb gray geese with two shots (the only for the evening). And I shot them down at a maximum distance, what happens rather seldom!”

The text of the Nobel Diploma, which was handed in to the writer later, at the awarding ceremony, reads: “The Swedish Academy at the meeting on October, 15, 1965, in accordance with the terms of Alfred Nobel of November, 27, 1895, according to his will, decided to award Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov the Nobel Prize of 1965 in the field of literature in recognition of his artistic power and integrity that he displayed in his Don historical epic about the life stages of the Russian people. Stockholm, December, 10, 1965. [Signature].”

Yekaterina Karbysheva