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Lilac “Mikhail Sholokhov” is Our Pride and Beauty

Every year, at the Estate of M.A.Sholokhov, incredibly beautiful lilacs blossom with their opulent bunches filling the spring air of Stanitsa Vyoshenskaya with a delicate fragrant aroma. Here is a brief story of the lilac “Mikhail Sholokhov”.

Svetlana Sholokhova, the writer’s daughter, remembers an article by Leonid Leonov in the “Literaturnaya Gazeta” about the famous L.A.Kolesnikov’s lilac collection dissipated after his death. There disappeared such unique species as “Indira Gandhi”, “Marshal Zhukov”, “Galina Ulanova”, “Mikhail Sholokhov” and others. Svetlana Mikhailovna and her husband began searching for the lilac named in honour of her father. They phoned to the Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy, where the collection of the well-known selectionist was planted in dedication to the Great Patriotic War and its heroes. At the exposition site demonstrating the best lilac species of Kolesnikov the bushes were big, so the visitors were offered only cuttings of the right sort for subsequent grafting.

A part of Kolesnikov’s collection was moved to the site of the All-Union Association “Flowers”. Unfortunately, there were no seedlings of the lilac “Mikhail Sholokhov” and again only cuttings from adult plants were offered. But they were given the address of the experimental plant station, where about 40 lilac species of the famous master including that of “Mikhail Sholokhov” were cultivated.

The director of the experimental plant station V.L.Romanova, who was a classmate of the writer’s elder son A.M.Sholokhov at the Timiryazev Agricultural Academy, kindly invited them to come.

So, in 1986, an unusual lilac with large drooping inflorescences and big fragrant mauve flowers settled at the Estate of M.A.Sholokhov in Stanitsa Vyoshenskaya, where he lived and worked the last 35 years of his life: in the central walkway leading to the House of Mikhail Alexandrovich, by the writer’s tomb and along the fence of the “Orchard of Memory”.

On the days of the 100th anniversary celebration of the “immortal and great man” Leonid Tulunsky wrote in his literary diary: “Lilacs are blooming smelling sweetly and secretly reminding: “The writer Mikhail Sholokhov is alive… I bless him…”; “The May’s scent of lilac shrouded not only people living on the expanse

of the Don country, but all the people living on our planet. He is omnipotent and immortal.”

Actually, while on working expeditions purposed for exchanging experience on preservation and restoration of the historical appearance of natural landscapes and gardening of memorial sites the Museum workers presented seedlings of lilac “Mikhail Sholokhov” grown at the writer’s estate. Now, every spring, lavish blossom of Sholokhov lilac delights and makes happy all the admirers of the writer’s work not only in Vyoshenskaya, but also in many parts of our country.

Yekaterina Malikova
Yana Korobova