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“…The Man is Strong and Lives in Our Literature for Real”

March 27, 2018, is the 110th anniversary of Vitaly Zakrutkin, a Don writer, the winner of the Stalin Prize and the State USSR Prize.

V.A.Zakrutkin was a native of Theodosia. A teachers’ son, he grew up in a village. In 1932, he graduated from the Blagoveshchensk M.I.Kalinin Pedagogical Institute, and in 1936, – finished his postgraduate course of the Leningrad A.I. Herzen Pedagogical Institute. Following the defense of the Candidate thesis he was appointed head of the department of Russian literature in the Rostov Pedagogical Institute. He took part in the Great Patriotic War, worked as war correspondent. He completed the war in Berlin. In 1947, Vitaly Alexandrovich settled in the Don stanitsa of Kochetkovskaya, where he lived to the end of his life. For a long time he had been deputy to the local and regional councils and had done a lot for the residents of the stanitsa.

The first book “Academician Plyushchov” by V.A.Zakrutkin was published shortly before the war. In 1941, he published a book of articles “Pushkin and Lermontov”, and his wartime works were published in the books “Brown Plague” (1941), “Force” (1942) and “Caucasian Notes” (1947). In the postwar years he created the novels “Creation of the World”, “Floating Village”, “Mother the Human” and a short story “Sunflower”. V.A.Zakrutkin devoted his big essay “A Flower of Tulip Steppe” (“Tsvet Lazorevy”) to the work of M.A.Sholokhov. To the last of his days the writer worked over his story “On Golden Sands”. V.A.Zakrutkin died on October 10, 1984.

V.A.Zakrutkin and M.A.Sholokhov first met in 1935. Later they often met in Rostov, Moscow, Vyoshenskaya and in Kochetovskaya. The Great Patriotic War, that left a deep imprint in the lives of both the writers, was always the main theme of their talk. Speaking at the meeting of the Don literary community about the work of Zakrutkin, who connected his life with the Cossacks of Stanitsa Kochetovskaya, Sholokhov said: “Vitaly Zakrutkin is a talented writer, a wonderful guy, man of hard life, who is strong and lives in our literature for real.”

An unusual literary meeting of the Don writers took place in June 1952, at the construction site of the Tsimlyansk hydroelectric complex. Later, in the article “Speaking of Sholokhov” V.A.Zakrutkin wrote: “… My friends and I happened to travel several weeks with Sholokhov about the Don stanitsas and to live in the workers' settlements of Tsimlyansk hydroelectric complex. Each of us was to write

an essay about the Volga-Don Canal. In the daytime Sholokhov together with us observed different sites of the giant construction, and at night he wrote.

He locked himself up in a separate room, worked to the point of exhaustion, suddenly woke us up in the middle of the night, asked, as if testing himself, to listen to another version of his essay, angrily dismissed our praises, tore up the written sheets, was nervous, again locked himself up in the stuffy, smoke-filled room, and an hour and a half later he would come up to one of us with a simple-guilty smile to ask: “Well, listen, I think it is better!”

Those searches for the best went on from night to night, wearied us completely, we were only surprised: where this man takes his force from and where is the limit of his ruthless exactingness”. This example of writer's work became a great lesson for the young writers.

“I was touched and attracted by the fact that Mikhail Alexandrovich knew and loved all living things on earth, – Zakrutkin wrote about his teacher. – In all verity, an artist should possess an unprecedentedly sharp sight, sensitive soul loving all living things to pass by nothing on earth and to be prone to a hot, excited response ...”

In the memorial house-museum of V.A.Zakrutkin in Stanitsa Kochetovskaya there is a book by M.A.Sholokhov “Virgin Soil Upturned” bearing a dedication inscription of the author: “To one of the dearest to my heart friends in war experience and in writing – Vitaly Zakrutkin, whom I love a lot, like man, and whom I just as firmly believe…”

Natalya Kirsanova
Yekaterina Karbysheva