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M.A.Sholokhov and A.I.Busyghin

In 2015, we mark the 150^th anniversary of Alexander Ivanovich Busyghin, a close friend of M.A.Sholokhov from the 1920-s, a Don prose-writer, essayist and the author of the stories “The Two”, “He Took His Revenge”, ”A Settlement of Kremnyovka”, “The Steel was Tempered” and others.

At the age of 14 A.Busyghin began his work in the Vladikavkaz railway plant. Shortly before the Revolution the young worker was drafted into the army and sent to the front. He served in the Red Army five years. He was a machine gunner, a commander and a commissar of the armoured train. In 1922, being demobilized from the Army he returned to the locomotive repair plant. Later, A.I.Busyghin set to journalism and began working for the newspaper “Sovetsky Yug” (Soviet South). He was one of the initiators of the North-Caucasian Association of Proletarian Writers including M.A.Sholokhov, V.M. Kirshon, A.A.Fadeyev, V.P.Stavsky.

Before the beginning of the Great Patriotic War A.Busyghin began his work over the novel “The Beserghenevs Family”, but could not complete it: he went to the front as a war correspondent for the army newspaper “K Pobede” (To the Victory). In October of 1941, he died heroically in the battle under Smolensk.

In 1952, on the initiative of Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov, the Rostov book publishing house edited a book of selected works by A.I.Busyghin.In the preface to the book M.A.Sholokhov wrote: “He toiled hard seeking his way for mastering his art of writing, and all that he had comprehended and done during his short writer’s life he considered to be only a beginning, his first steps in the field of literature. When at the front as a war correspondent for the army newspaper, and all the time being among dear to him, ordinary Soviet people, the Country’s defenders, Busyghin often dreamt: ”If I survive,– these are the people whom I am going to write about after the war! What a heroic hardening these great people have! I can’t admire them enough!” And those whom he admired, our soldiers and officers, reticent in praise, lovingly and proudly said about him: “Busyghin? Sasha, curly-haired? He is always with us. He is a true fellow!”

The dreams and working plans of Busyghin were not destined to come true… He lived an honest life and died an honest death of a soldier. He was badly wounded in both the legs, but still he made his last effort to crawl to the machine-gun, which crew was killed by an enemy mine, and shielding the withdrawal of his comrades he fired alone, until the last cartridge left. Let his book remind again about those who gave their lives for the Country, whose memory we worship sacredly, whom we must not and are not able to forget…”

Nataliya Kirsanova
Yekaterina Karbysheva