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Sholokhov Lilac on the Map of Eurasia

On April 25, 2017, the Museum-Reserve of M.A.Sholokhov held a campaign “Sholokhov Lilac on the Map of Eurasia” in the forest park area “Pearl of Eurasia”. The campaign was joined by the young ecologists from the Rostov, Voronezh, Kaluga and Lipetsk regions, the Krasnodar Territory, the republics of Kabardino-Balkaria and Mari El.

The campaign was held within the frames of the All-Russian environmental subbotnik “Green Spring-2017” supported by the Nongovernmental Environmental Foundation named after V.I.Vernadsky and was dedicated to the Year of Ecology in Russia.

The members of the subbotnik were greeted by T.V.Avgusmanova, leader of the educational programs of the Nongovernmental V.I.Vernadsky Environmental Foundation, P.I.Makushkin, Head of the Sholokhov Interdistrict Sector of the Forestry Development Department of the Rostov Region Natural Resources and Environment, A.S.Pekhtashev, Head of the Kalininsky LLC “Gazprom Volgograd Transgaz”, and T.Y.Turchin, Deputy Head for Economic and Environmental Activity of the Museum-Reserve of M.A.Sholokhov.

Lilac was one of the favourite decorative shrubs of the Sholokhovs family. Lilac decorates the Estate of M.A.Sholokhov, where he lived and worked in 1949–1984. A.M.Sholokhov, the State Duma Deputy of the RF Federal Meeting, the writer’s grandson, told a story about the lilac of “Mikhail Sholokhov” species created by the well-known selectionist L.A.Kolesnikov. Today, this lilac can be seen in different parts of Russia and near foreign countries, where the memory of the great writer is honoured: in Moscow by the monument of M.A.Sholokhov in Gogol Boulevard, in Daryinskoye (the Kazakhstan Republic), in the Museum-Reserve of V.M.Shukshin in the Altai, in the Voronezh Region by the Boguchar boarding school named after M.A.Sholokhov, in the museum-reserves: of I.S.Turgenev “Spasskoye-Lutovinovo”, of L.N.Tolstoy “Yasnaya Polyana”, of A.S.Pushkin “Mikhailovskoye” and others.

On the forest area personal plots of the 24 RF subjects and near foreign countries, the young ecologists planted 120 seedlings of lilac “Mikhail Sholokhov” grown in the mini nursery of the Museum-Reserve of M.A.Sholokhov. The plants organically blended into the landscape of the forest park area and in some years they will become its worthy decoration. The forest area soil being sandy the fertile

earth was added into each planting pit to increase in survivability and stability of the seedlings in the future.

As a sign of love for lilac and for Sholokhov, of course, the members of the event were wearing bright breast emblems in the form of a heart with a picture of blossoming lilac. The representatives of the regions were presented with lilac seedlings “Mikhail Sholokhov” with a closed root system. The May lilac smell will connect all lovers of the great Russian writer with an invisible thread.

Yelena Soldatova
Serghei Sivtsov