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Black Cobweb of the Plot

A meeting devoted to the Memory Day of M.A.Sholokhov took place on February, 20, in the Palace of Culture of Vyoshenskaya. A literary and documentary composition “Black Cobweb” performed by the theatrical studio of the National M.A.Sholokhov Museum-Reserve told the audience about the events of 1938, one of the most tragic periods in the life of the writer and all our country.

The composition is based on the letter of Ivan Semyonovich Pogorelov, a security officer, a Communist Party worker and the writer’s close friend, who took part in the events and saved the life of the author of the novel “And Quiet Flows the Don”.

In 1938, Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov had already been a well-known writer. His works were published in huge circulation in all the languages of the world, his name sounded in all the continents. He was a prominent public figure, Deputy of the USSR Supreme Soviet, was active in promoting a collective construction and improvement of Stanitsa Vyoshenskaya.

He couldn’t remain indifferent to arrests and punishment of the leaders, Party workers and ordinary people in the Upper Don region. In his letters to Stalin Sholokhov wrote about Party functionaries’ brutal abuse of ordinary collective farmers and Cossack individual peasants, whom they forced to join the collective farming, about the repressive policy of the Rostov Regional Communist Party Committee and the Regional People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs towards the best Communists. Sometimes the clouds gathered over the head of the writer himself. In 1937, P.Lugovoy, Secretary of the Vyoshensky District Party Committee, a close friend of Sholokhov, P.Krasyukov, a Bureau member of the Vyoshensky District Communist Party Committee, T.Logachov, Chairman of the District Executive Committee, and many other residents of Vyoshenskaya were arrested. On this occasion M.A.Sholokhov said to V.P.Stavsky, General Secretary of the USSR Union of Writers, who came to Stanitsa Vyoshenskaya in September of 1937 on behalf of I.V.Stalin:”I don’t believe in the guilt of Lugovoy and if he is convicted, hence I am also guilty…Because in the district we did everything together”. Thanks to Sholokhov’s intercession that his friends were released.

Many times the life of the writer himself hung by a thread. M.A.Sholokhov wrote to I.V.Stalin on February, 16, 1938: “Within the five years I have hardly written a half of the book. In such circumstances what were in Vyoshenskaya it was impossible not only to work effectively, but even to live was immensely hard. And now it is still difficult to live. My enemies are still blackcobwebbing around me.”

The theatrical studio performers of the M.A.Sholokhov Museum-Reserve told how the authorities of the Rostov People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs ordered the Chekist I.S.Pogorelov to collect incriminating information about Sholokhov, to arrest him, question and beat out the necessary information from him. There were considered the options for the arrest and murder of the writer. However Pogorelov, a former admirer of Sholokhov’s work, a person of crystal honesty, wise and courageous, warned the writer about the impending provocation and honestly informed the Political Bureau in Moscow about it.

Realization of the plan for saving the writer’s life was fraught with great risk to the life of I.S.Pogorelov himself.

In February of 1961, I.S.Pogorelov wrote to M.A.Sholokhov:”I am proud of my having saved your life for the Country, but at the same time I thank you million times for your having saved my life too. Dear Mikhail Alexandrovich, let us live and work for the good of our powerful and great Country.”

At his 50^th anniversary M.A.Sholokhov said: “Vanya Pogorelov is my friend and comrade, yes, I think, even more than a friend and a comrade.” Their close friendship lasted all their life. From 1968 to 1972, I.S.Pogorelov worked as the writer’s assistant on deputy matters.

The memoirs of Pogorelov entitled “Act” were published in full in December of 1988, in several issues of the newspaper “Molot”. The role of I.S.Pogorelov in saving Sholokhov’s life was spoken about in the memoirs of P.K.Lugovoy, and its first chapters appeared in the newspaper “Vecherny Rostov”. A complete version of them were published in the journal “Don” and in the miscellany “With Blood and Sweat” issued in Rostov in 1991.

On October, 31, 1938, in the study room of Stalin, justice had been done: the cobweb of the plot was broken, and Sholokhov and Pogorelov were guaranteed their security.

 “The case of Sholokhov” having been considered, on November, 14, 1938, Stalin sent to the regional Party committees a directive ordering to conduct an inspection in the bodies of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs and to clear them from all “alien” people “undeserving a political trust.” On November, 17, the Political Bureau adopted a joint resolution of the USSR Council of People’s Commissars and the Central Committee of All-Russian Communist Party (of Bolsheviks), which noted, that “a simplified process of investigation and trial”  led to “the biggest disadvantages and perversions” in the work of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs and prosecution bodies. The Decree abolished the “troika” and installed a prosecutorial surveillance for all detention procedures.

On November, 22, Sholokhov said: “Now I am working over the eighth, final part of the novel “And Quiet Flows the Don”. The work has been half done.”

The event in the memory of the great writer opened new pages of his biography, told about the conditions, in which he had to create his great novel.

Tatiyana Nektova