News

News

A Commemorative Plaque in Honour of Sholokhov is Opened in Starocherkasskaya

On May, 21, in the Starocherkassk Historical and Architectural Museum-Reserve, a commemorative plaque in honour of Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov, initiator of the museum establishment in 1970, is opened. The author of the commemorative plaque is sculptor S.M.Isakov, Member of the Russian Union of Artists. At the opening ceremony a welcoming speech was made by Alexander Mikhailovich Sholokhov, Director of the National M.A.Sholokhov Museum-Reserve.

M.A.Sholokhov, comprehending the importance of historical and cultural memorials, on June, 19, 1970, in the year of the 400^th anniversary of the Don Cossacks, addressed his letter to the RSFSR Council of Ministers and to L.I.Brezhnev, General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, and proposed to establish a museum-reserve in Stanitsa Starocherkasskaya.

“…The people of the outlying part of Russia, who once inhabited it, had been standing on the borders of their homeland for centuries, and it is necessary to preserve for history and posterity at least what has been left despite our neglect of our country’s monuments,– he wrote to G.I.Voronov, Chairman of the RSFSR Council of Ministers. – Why don’t you, Gennady Ivanovich, send to Starocherkassk an authoritative State commission of historians, who would find out what objects and values need restoration and conservation? After all the Ukrainians have done something like that in the former Zaporozhye Sech, and we, as if, were born yesterday? I beg you, personally, to pay attention to the Don part of the RSFSR. After all, you are not only Chairman of the Council of Ministers, but you are also a Russian man. I embrace you and wish you all the best. Mikhail Sholokhov. Stanitsa Vyoshenskaya. 19.6.1970.”

On December, 1970, the Government Resolution about establishing the Starocherkassk Museum-Reserve was issued.

On the territory of the museum there were preserved and taken for record and restoration 100 monuments of history, architecture and culture. It is one of the largest complexes in the south of Russia and it is included in the UNESCO reference books. Annually Starocherkasskaya is visited by about 200 thousand tourists from many counties of the world.

Olga Bakhtiyarova