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M.Sholokhov: “I am Sad and Sick to Write…”

On July 1934, I.V.Stalin invited for a talk in his study in the Kremlin Kaganovich, Zhdanov, Sholokhov, Mekhlis and other persons who were aware of the hardest situation in the Don northern districts of the Azov-Black Sea areas. Because of the excesses in grain storing in 1933, thousands of people and their families were left without bread, starved terribly.

Later Sholokhov remembered of those years: “So we lived. I am sad and sick to write about all the methods applied for destroying collective farms and for poisoning us day after day. In Rostov, the region economy was wreckingly planned in all spheres”.

The writer and other persons invited by Stalin discussed the problem in his study from 15.30 to 16.50, then the General Secretary talked only to Kaganovich, Zhdanov, Kuibyshev and Mekhlis. After the talk Stalin formed a commission including Zhdanov, Chernov, Gurevich, Mikoyan, Kleiner, Grinko, Malinov, Lukin, Sholokhov and Yurkin for developing the measures to resolve the plight. The Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (of Bolsheviks)(CC CP(B) on June 23, approved the draft resolutions of the CC CP(B) and the USSR Council of People's Commissars “On the Assistance for the Collective Farms of the Azov-Black Sea Area” prepared by the commission of Zhdanov.

The people of the Upper Don region had got a support from the centre. Thanks to the initiative of M.A.Sholokhov, thanks to his brave appeal directly to Stalin thousands of people could survive at that time in a literal sense.

Alexey Kochetov