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The History of the House at the Estate of M.A.Sholokhov

An act of acceptance of the house at the estate of M.A.Sholokhov in Stanitsa Vyoshenskaya was signed 70 years ago, on January 21, 1949. The construction was conducted during 1946 – 1949, according to the individual project designed by the project organization “Rostovoblproekt” of the RSFSR Ministry of Communal Services under the direction of the famous architect V.V.Barinov.

In March 1946, there was issued a Decree of the USSR Council of People’s Commissars “On the Events of Cottage Building for the Full Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences”, which schemed to build country houses near Moscow and Leningrad for the academicians, who made the great personal contribution in the victory over fascism. M.A.Sholokhov was allowed to use the allotted means for building a new house in Stanitsa Vyoshenskaya, as the wooden house with a mezzanine, where the writer and his family lived before the Great Patriotic War, was destroyed in 1942, during the bombardment of the stanitsa.

The house building project, which original is kept in the collection of the Museum-Reserve of M.A.Sholokhov, bears a stamp: “This project was considered by the Rostov Regional Architectural Commission, the Department of Architecture and was approved by protocol № 84 of January 31, 1947, with relevant comments. Head of the Department of Architecture. Signature. Rostov-on-Don”.

The house was built by the Construction Office of the CPSU Central Committee and the trust "Rostoblselstroy". A two-story wooden mansion was put up in the centre of the estate. Its strip foundations are made of rubble stone. The basement of the building is brick, plastered. The walls are made of wooden boards plastered outside and inside.

The roof was planned to be a complicated configuration. Originally the house was covered with roofing galvanized iron. The basement, where the boiler room is located, has a separate entrance from the street. In the project, on the sheet showing a plan of the basement, there is an inscription made by the architect Barinov: “The sketch of the temporary boiler house is coordinated with M.A.Sholokhov on 3.7.48, valid: architect Barinov. Signature”.

The façades of the building were decorated in the style of Soviet neoclassicism. The main southern façade of the house faces the River Don. Its expressiveness is emphasized by a spacious terrace with a balcony – a canopy on the front door wooden carved racks and a barrier of wooden turned balusters on the

terrace and balcony. The façades united by single eaves and interfloor cornice structure are decorated with embossed wooden ornament: platbands, sandriks, carved tops over the apertures, elements of the windowsills, corner rusticated pilasters. Around the roof perimeter of the building above the crowning eaves, except gables, there is a fence of small support columns and wooden turned balusters.

The entrance to the north façade is highlighted by a porch with a balcony fixed on wooden racks over it. Inside the house between the floors there is an oak staircase made of turned balusters. In the kitchen of the house, during its construction, a Russian stove was made, which successfully operates even today.

The family of M.A.Sholokhov moved into the new house on January 14, 1949. Living in the new house M.A.Sholokhov worked over the novels “They Fought for Their Country”, “Virgin Soil Upturned”, wrote a story “The Fate of a Man”, was actively engaged in social work. Warm and friendly meetings with residents of the district and region, deputies, writers, filmmakers, figures of culture and art took place in this house. Here the family was visited by N.S.Khrushchov, Y.A.Gagarin, Ch.P.Snow, V.A.Zakrutkin, A.V.Sofronov, V.M.Shukshin, and others.

On March 7, 1987, the third death anniversary of M.A.Sholokhov, the writer’s wife Mariya Petrovna Sholokhova and their children donated the house to the State.

At present, the estate is a memorial monument, a site of cultural heritage of federal significance connected with the life and work of M.A.Sholokhov, a writer, the winner of the State, Lenin and Nobel prizes, twice Hero of Socialist Labour. The house is registered and protected by the State based on the Resolution of the RSFSR Council of Ministers of July 11, 1984, № 306.

Vladimir Shchebunyayev
Natalya Shchebunyayeva