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The 105th Anniversary of the Writer and Journalist

Om July 20, it is the 105th anniversary of Alexander Arsentyevich Bakharev (1911–1974), a writer and journalist, a wonderful essayist and a close friend of Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov. The main subject of the work of Bakharev was man’s life on the earth.

He was born to a peasant family in a village of Pushkino the Lipetsk Region. He finished local school with honours. During the struggle against illiteracy he worked as village librarian, then as head on cultural and propagandist work in the District Comsomol Committee, responsible secretary of the Dobrinsk district newspaper “Leninsky Put”. Later he worked for the newspapers of Michurinsk and Tambov. He graduated from Higher Party School of the CPSU Central Committee, journalist faculty. In the 1940–60s, he worked as correspondent for the newspapers “Pravda” and “Sovetskaya Rossiya”.

He began his writing career with essays. Early in the 1950s, Bakharev’s essays were published in Tambov, Rostov-on-Don and Moscow about collective farms, the heritage of I.V.Michurin and about the construction of the Volgo-Don Canal. His first novel “A Big Flow” was published in 1953 in the journal “Don”. The next year it was published in Rostov in a separate edition and was followed by the second novel – “Northern Bunches” (1962).

His collections of short stories and essays were published in separate editions in Moscow and Rostov: “A Steppe Song” (1963), “Days of Our Enxieties” (1964), “We Won’t Have Rest” (1972). In 1958, Bakharev was admitted to the Union of Writers of the USSR. From 1961 to 1974, he headed the board of the Rostov Regional Writer’s Organization. The personages of his new books are workers (“Personally Responsible”, 1971), miners (“The Miners”, 1973) and agricultural workers (“The Man Hides His Eyes”, 1966–1977).

During the last years of his life Bakharev worked over the novel “Hurricane” devoted to the grain-growers of the Don and Kuban region.

Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov was in the warmest friendly relations with Alexander Bakharev. They had known each other since the 1950s and met very often. On his visits to Rostov Mikhail Alexandrovich always came to see the writers’ organization, which board had been headed by Bakharev for a long time. Sometimes they met in Rostov hotels of “Don” and “Moskovskaya”.

Late in July of 1954, there was one of the meetings of M.Sholokhov, A.Bakharev and V.Zakrutkin on the first arrival of Pyotr Gavrilenko, a Kazakhstan journalist, to the Don region.

At the meetings they usually discussed the issues of literary life and new publications. On June 8, 1960, in Rostov hotel “Moskovskaya”, where the writers M.A.Sholokhov, A.A.Bakharev, M.A.Andriasov, V.A.Kochetov and A.A.Sidorov were present, Mikhail Alexandrovich spoke highly about the novel “Yershov Brothers” by V.Kochetov: “I would not be able to write so about the working class”. V.A.Kochetov answered: “Thank you, Mikhail Alexandrovich! I feel to be awarded the Sholokhov Prize today”

In summer of 1964, Bakharev was one of the guests at the meeting of M.A.Sholokhov with the workers of the Kirov Plant of Leningrad, which took place in Stanitsa Vyoshenskaya. Alexander Arsentyevich described this meeting in details and published it in the journal “Don”, issue 8, 1964.

A.A.Bakharev was a guest of Mikhail Alexandrovich at his birthday parties in Stanitsa Vyoshenskaya and in Moscow, saw him off and met him from different trips.

Remembering one of their joint travellings along the River Don Alexander Arsentyevich writes in his essay ”Highness” devoted to M.A.Sholokhov: “The thoughts of Mikhail Alexandrovch are imbued with faith in the power of man. Being an inspired singer of a new world and new people he passionately dreams of transformation of arid steppes and is directly involved in this transformation. Listening to him you involuntarily think: how can he manage to break into the big stormy life?... He is always concerned about new agricultural equipment for collective farms. He has long been concerned about the construction of a bridge over the Don. He always gives his kind advice and proposals about the public service improvement of the villages, about afforestation of the sands and improvement of trade in rural areas. The writer lives by all that the villagers are concerned.

That is why you can hear a living and bubbling sea of human passions in Sholokhov’s books. That is why his work has become the top seen from everywhere!”

The Museum-Reserve keeps a book with an autograph of Alexander Bakharev, which was presented to the writer in 1959: “To Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov with love and friendly devotion from an unskilled swimmer of “a big flow”. A.Bakharev. 16/X-54”.

Galina Govorukhina