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The First Scientific Edition of the Novel “And Quiet Flows the Don” by M.A.Sholokhov

In 2017, the first scientific edition of the novel “And Quiet Flows the Don” by M.A.Sholokhov was issued. It was prepared in the A.M. Gorky Institute of the World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences. It was a result of the long painstaking work of the researchers, who according to the principles of the domestic textology were the first to verify all the known text sources of the work beginning with autographs and ending with the last lifetime collection of works of the writer. Besides, they carefully studied the history of creation of all the four books of the novel.

The textological studies in the lifetime editions of the novel “And Quiet Flows the Don” have revealed lots of variants, which are the author’s text variants, traces of editorial and censorship interventions and annoying mistakes and typos conditioned by the long-term edition. Each of the cases was comprehensively analyzed and estimated.

The study of the extant autographs of the work allowed in a number of cases to clarify the text of the novel “And Quiet Flows the Don” and, what is more important, to understand the logic of the writer’s work over the novel and to get an idea of formation and development of its intention.

All these led the researchers to the fundamental conclusion that there was no single main source of the four books of the novel “And Quiet Flows the Don” published by Sholokhov during the long fifteen years. In the scientific edition, the first, the second and the third books of the novel were printed based on their separate editions of 1933; the fourth book was reproduced according to the extant authorized typescript given by the writer in 1937, to the State Publishing House of Fiction (the seventh part), and to the text of the journal “Novy Mir” 1949 (the eighth part). As a result of critical comprehension of these texts there were made numerous amendments based on the studies in all the sources of the novel “And Quiet Flows the Don”. This is a correction of reprint or typing errors and recovering the fragments wrongly removed from the work by the editor or censor.

The choice of the main source of the books of the novel “And Quiet Flows the Don” is scientifically grounded in the textological afterwords, where, as well, the novel history is recreated, the examples of different interpretations for each of its editions are given, and the amendments to the main text are listed.

The texts of the first and second books of the novel “And Quiet Flows the Don” are prepared by Y.A.Dvoryashin and A.A.Kozlovsky, the author of the textological afterwords is Y.A.Dvoryashin. The texts of the third and fourth books and the textological afterwords are prepared by G.N.Vorontsova.

The discussion of all the issues related to the preparation of the scientific edition of the novel at different stages was joined by the members of the group for the collected works by M.A.Sholokhov – F.G.Biryukov, V.V.Vasilyev,, N.P.Velikanova, I.P.Kazakova, E.A.Tyurina, A.M.Ushakov, and the leader of the Department of the Newest Russian Literature and Literature of the Russian Diaspora of the Institute of the World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences N.V.Korniyenko, the workers of the Department N.I.Shubnikova-Guseva and V.N.Teryokhina.

Scientific reviewers of the edition are N.I.Shubnikova-Guseva and L.A.Spiridonova.