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A New Museum is Opened in Millerovo

On October, 22, a new museum with an exhibition “The Worlds of Sculptor Mozhayev” was opened in the building of the Millerovo railway station.

The opening ceremony was joined by N.V.Mozhayev, a sculptor, Honoured Artist of Ukraine, the winner of M.A.Sholokhov Prize, member of the Artists’ Union of Russia; P.V.Martynkevich, Head of the Millerovo railway station; V.S.Makarenko, Head of the Millerovo District; R.A.Topolskov, Chairman of the Millerovo District Meeting of Deputies; O.A.Anistratenko, Deputy Director of the National M.A.Sholokhov Museum-Reserve; Y.A.Malashenko, Deputy Head of the Rostov Centre for Organizational Work of the Railway Stations of the North-Caucasian Railways; representatives of the clergy, town and district public.

All the speakers noted the significance and uniqueness of the exhibition of N.V.Mozhayev and the theme of Sholokhov in the work of the sculptor. They stressed the interrelation of the work of Mozhayev and the great writer Sholokhov with the town of Millerovo.

Millerovo was often mentioned in Sholokhov’s works. For instance, in the novel “And Quiet Flows the Don”, from Millerovo station Bolshevik Shtockman made his way by a horse cart to Vyoshenskaya. To the station of Millerovo from the estate of Yagodnoye, Grigory Melekhov took squireling Listnitsky, and on his way back he nearly drowned in an early flood in the village of Olkhovy Rog. Just to Millerovo, Grigory’s father, Pantelei Prokofyevich, used to travel “to buy soap and burning oil”. Through the station of Millerovo, Grigory, wounded, came back home from the German front.

As “Virgin Soil Upturned” goes, from Millerovo, Semyon Davydov, a locksmith of the Kirov Tractor Plant, a twenty-five-thousander sent by the Communist Party of Bolsheviks, with a case full of small tools, travelled by a horse cart to Vyoshenskaya on “collective farm affairs”. Here in the novel, Semyon Davydov takes Varyukha-Goryukha by a bullock-cart to the agricultural school with Ded Shchukar being his coachman.

Sholokhov’s places in Millerovo keep the memory of the great writer: the Logachovs’ house, the railway station, Sholokhov’s oaks. In 2007, in Millerovo, there was put up a monument to Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov, the first freeman of Millerovo. The author of this monument is N.V.Mozhayev.

In Rostov-on-Don and in different parts of the Rostov Region there are monuments and memorial signs connected with the life and work of M.A.Sholokhov created by the sculptor N.V.Mozhayev: “Eagle”, “Grigory and Aksiniya”, “To the Cossacks of the Quiet Don”, “They Fought for Their Country” and other works. For the outstanding contribution into spreading the writer’s work, in 1996, Nikolay Vasilyevich Mozhayev was awarded the All-Russian Prize of M.A.Sholokhov.

The monuments, memorial plaques and monumental decorative compositions beautify the cities and villages of Russia and Ukraine.

The Museum in the building of the Millerovo railway station will work permanently from 8.00 to 18.00 without breaks, days-off and holidays. There are prospects on deepening the theme of Sholokhov in the museum exhibition. The museum has been included into the list of sights of the Millerovo District and into the tourist itineraries around the Don country.

Yelena Subbotina