News

News

Memory Leaves the Pages

February 21 - on the Memory Day of Mikhail Sholokhov - the residents of the stanitsa Veshenskaya gathered for the thirty-sixth time in the Vyoshensky House of Culture to celebrate this mournful date together. An evening prepared by the staff of the National Sholokhov Museum-Reserve, thematically referred the attention of those gathered to the events of the 30s and 40s years of the last century. It was then that the young writer more than once addressed directly to I. Stalin, in order to restore abused justice, to protect his comrades-in-arms, as well as thousands of ordinary farmers. And the formidable leader, Secretary General of the Central Committee of the CPSU (B.), agreed, personally intervened in what was happening on the upper Don. It is estimated that Sholokhov and Stalin met 12 times, then the head of the Soviet state received 14 letters and notes from the author of “And Quiet Flows the Don”. The authors of the ulterior motive gave the name to their dramatization - “The Writer and the Leader”. 

It seems that history itself on this day leafed through the tragic pages of days past. 

The hosts of the evening were Vladimir Antipov (screenwriter and director), Ivan Soldatov, Milana Kesaeva and Yulia Kramorova talked about the years of the great turning point, the different stages of collectivization, about excesses, gross violations of the law, torture and bullying of those who insisted on voluntary entry into collective farms. Examples were given of the use of force, confiscation of bread and property, which gave rise to a terrible famine of 1932-1933. Together with the extras, the presenters voiced the memories of the Upper Don citizens about what was happening then in almost every farm. These memories directly echoed the angry lines of Sholokhov letters to the Kremlin and Stalin. The secretary general sent a commission to the Don headed by the secretary of the party board of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Shkiryatov, and, making sure the writer was right, urgently allocated assistance to the affected areas. 

A story was sounded from the stage about how in 1938 the leaders of the Rostov Regional NKVD plotted a conspiracy against Sholokhov and only a miracle in the person of the old chekist Ivan Pogorelov and the solid Stalinist word saved the writer then. 

The script of the evening in the House of Culture also covered the period of the forties, when Mikhail Sholokhov volunteered for the front as a military commander of “Pravda”, “Red Star” and “Sovinformburo”. And the day before, he urged the community to fight the Nazis until victory, and handed over to the Defense Fund the Stalin Prize of the first degree just received for the “And Quite Flows the Don”. 

The words spoken this evening from the lips of amateur artists were accompanied by well-selected newsreels. Students from Vyoshensky pedagogical college named after M.A. Sholokhov and high school students took part in mass scenes. 

Alexey Kochetov