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Our First Director

On January, 21, it would be the 85th anniversary of Nikolay Alexandrovich Bulavin, the first director of the National M.A.Sholokhov Museum-Reserve, the man, who made a great contribution into development of Sholokhov land.

The whole life of Nikolay Alexandrovich was devoted to people and his tireless work for their benefit. In 1957, he graduated from the Azov Black Sea Institute of Agricultural Mechanization and came, as he was sent, to the “Kruzhilinsky” state farm, where he worked as agronomist, then as director of that state farm. Later he was chairman of the Vyoshensky Executive Committee, the First Secretary of the District Communist Party Committee. During the years of his activity the district became one of the leaders in the Rostov Region.

It was Bulavin who was entrusted a great work of establishing in 1984 the National M.A.Sholokhov Museum-Reserve and as far as 1987, Nikolay Alexandrovich headed it.

N.A.Bulavin was repeatedly elected deputy of the Vyoshensky District Council of People’s Deputies, member of the Rostov Region Committee of the USSR Communist Party, delegate for the regional Communist Party conferences; he was a delegate to the XXIV Congress of the USSR Communist Party from the Rostov Region. For his work he was awarded three orders of the Red Banner of Labour, two orders “Badge of Honour” and many other medals. One of the streets in Vyoshenskaya is named after him. In September of 2009, he was awarded (posthumously) the title “Honorary Resident of Stanitsa Vyoshenskaya”.

For long years N.A.Bulavin had been in friendly relations with Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov and his family. As Deputy of the USSR Supreme Soviet Mikhail Alexandrovich supported Bulavin in his activity for improving the people’s life and social and economic development of our district. During those years new houses of secondary schools, a post-office, a district recruitment office and a police station were built; there was opened a food factory, a plant of protein-vitamin feed, livestock complexes in several district state farms, a bridge across the River Don and other important facilities.

As the First Secretary of the District Committee of the USSR Communist Party N.A.Bulavin attended numerous meetings of the writer with the Party and State figures, public representatives, writers, took part in the anniversary celebrations and the writer’s awarding ceremonies. He published a number of deep and interesting articles about Sholokhov in the newspapers “Pravda”, “Molot”, “Sovetsky Don”, and others.

In the Museum collection there are postcards, which M.A.Sholokhov sent to Bulavin from his trips. Here is one of them received in May of 1974: “I am sending my greetings from Sweden however feeling my concern about the sowing campaign even here: have you finished it or you are still steeping in the rain? Here it is warm and dry. Give my best regards to your wife. 4.5.74. Stockholm.”

The Bulavins were frequenters to the Sholokhovs’ house; on the writer’s invitation they were present in the Bolshoi Theatre at the grand meeting dedicated to the 70th anniversary of Mikhail Alexandrovich.

After the writer’s death N.A.Bulavin sent to the First Secretary of the Rostov Region Communist Party Committee a note “About Memorialization of the Great Writer M.A.Sholokhov”, where he proposed to establish a literary museum-reserve of M.A.Sholokhov based on the writer’s dwelling house and estate to be joined later with other structures associated with the life and work of the writer; to ensure protective and forestry engineering measures in the unique natural sites of the Vyoshensky District, which had been previously visited by M.A.Sholokhov (the water spring of Otrog, Lake Ostrovnoye, Lebyazhiy Yar, Old Oak and others); he justified the need for particular measures for the rise of the economy and socio-cultural level of the state farms of the Vyoshensky District, for creation of infrastructure for tourism development. A greater part of those proposals formed the basis for the long-term development prospects of the Museum-Reserve.

In June of 1984, Nikolay Alexandrovich Bulavin became Director of the National M.A.Sholokhov Museum-Reserve. “We must create a unique of its kind literary and memorial museum, where the life and creative work of the writer will be functionally combined in time and space, where the environment will reveal the creative laboratory of the writer”,– he said to his co-workers at the very beginning of the Museum activity.

And now we can say with even a greater reason that at the origins of the Museum development there stood a wonderful, enthusiastic man, who inspired the young and inexperienced team in the new business. For more than thirty years of its existence the Museum has grown and become stronger. Now every countryman, even younger than the Museum, knows how much N.A.Bulavin made to memorialize M.A.Sholokhov, to develop the Museum and keep its good traditions formed at the very beginning of its activity.

Lyudmila Afanasyeva