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M.A.Sholokhov: I Can’t Live without Nature…”

On April 21, 2017, within the frames of the Year of Ecology in Russia, the excursion and exhibition centre “People’s House” started showing the exhibition “I Can’t Live without Nature…” telling about the work of the landscape master, the great Russian writer M.A.Sholokhov, about his contribution into preservation of the natural resources of Russia.

In the novel “And Quiet Flows the Don” by M.A.Sholokhov there are over 250 descriptions of nature. They are so imaginative and realistic, that the reader seems to smell the herbs, to feel the coolness of the forests and the heat of the red-hot sands, together with the heroes admires the Don and the blossoming tulip steppe.

Mikhail Alexandrovich travelled a lot, he visited different countries, but he loved his native land devotedly. Once talking with a Czech writer and journalist Frantishek Kubka he said: “I like travelling around the world, especially because it enables me to anticipate a joy of returning home, to my Cossack nest, where I know everyone and everyone knows me…”

The works on creation of the pine forest areas to detain the onset of loose sands to the Upper Don villages and stanitsas are associated with the name of M.A.Sholokhov. In 1949, on his initiative, there was established the Don Research Forestry Station which studied in the Don floodplain forests. This work is still ongoing.

Under Sholokhov’s assistance, there was established a protective zone of the Don bank, ponds were built and stocked. Besides, there was established a forest-hunting farm to breed elks, roes, deer, boars, squirrels, muskrats, raccoons, beavers, pheasants and other animals in the Don forests of Vyoshenskaya. The writer constantly kept in sight the problems of protection of the Upper Don natural resources.

The visitors of the exhibition will look into the letters, where Mikhail Alexandrovich applied to the highest authorities with a petition about development of the material and technical base of the Vyoshensky forestry, of the Don Research Forestry Station and fish industry collective farm of Vyoshenskaya.

M.A.Sholokhov, as Deputy of the USSR Supreme Soviet and member of the CPSU Central Committee, raised problems of preservation and augmentation of natural resources of the country on the State level. Every day hundreds of letters

from different parts of the country came to him asking to raise his voice in protection of the country’s natural resources.

In 1966, at the XXIII CPSU Congress, Sholokhov was one of the first to sound the alarm about the environmental condition of Lake Baikal saying that “our descendants will not forgive us, if we do not preserve “the glorious sea, sacred Baikal”. In this speech he paid attention to the problem of reduction in the number of valuable fish species in the Volga, the Don and the Azov Sea. This speech aroused a great resonance.

Besides, the exhibition shows the materials about the environmental activities of the Museum-Reserve of M.A.Sholokhov, about the international children and youth environmental movement “Sholokhov Source”, about the experience in environmental education, in bringing up a respectful attitude of the younger generation to the spiritual traditions of the people and careful attitude to nature. The Museum-Reserve is a laureate of the national award “EcoWorld”, the winner of the international project “Environmental Culture. Peace and Harmony” and of the All-Russian contest “Business Glory of Russia”, the finalist of the national award “Crystal Compass” and a number of other awards for the work in the field of environment and nature protection.

The exhibition “I Can’t Live without Nature…” will run until November 11, 2017.

Valery Yemelyanov