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Anniversary medal from Ivan Molchanov

Collection of the Museum-Reserve “Memorial things by Mikhail Sholokhov” replenished with a jubilee medal to the 70th anniversary of Mikhail Sholokhov from poet Ivan Molchanov. On the front side of the medal there is an engraving with the inscription “70 years”, on the back there are warm poetic lines to the writer: 

“To dear Mikhail Sholokhov.
Feather and bayonet. And the ardor of work.
Love, and laurels, and flowers ...
Already surrendered to the mercy of the pillboxes
Seventy height.
And my humble desire
Lurking in a friendly dream:
To have a good feast
At a glorious hundredth height!

Ivan Molchanov
May 24, 1975

The writers met in 1925 in Moscow. During his studies at the State Institute of Journalism, Molchanov passed the practice in the editorial office of the newly created “Komsomoliya” magazine, where young Mikhail Sholokhov brought the manuscript of his story “The Bakhchevnik”. Molchanov remembers: “Having arrived at the editorial office, he took a manuscript folded into a tube from the side pocket of his coat and laid it on the table, asking to read it immediately and give a conclusion: if the story responds to the magazine or not.” Molchanov read the story with pleasure and, after consulting with Zharov, immediately sent it for printing. “Could I think, accepting the story of the beginning author,” remembers I. Molchanov, “that two or three decades would pass, and this author would be a world-famous writer, that he would be a close friend in my Moscow youth, that I would send one of my books with a warm inscription to this world-famous writer, living in stanitsa Vyoshenskaya, and would receive in response a short but warm telegram: “I have received the book! Thanks, old friend. Sholokhov." This telegram is carefully stored in my album of letters from fellow writers to me. This photograph hangs on the wall above my desk, it captures three very young people: the first, with a pipe in his mouth (he came to my editorial office like that), is Mikhail Sholokhov, the second is a student of the Institute of Journalism Georgy Shubin and the third is the author of these lines ".

Elena Kleimenova
Galina Govorukhina