News

News

Order of the Patriotic War of 1st Class to Mikhail Sholokhov

75 years ago Mikhail Sholokhov was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War of 1st class.

In the first days of the Great Patriotic War Mikhail Sholokhov handed the State Prize awarded for the novel "And Quiet Flows the Don" over to the USSR Defense Fund.

Colonel Sholokhov was a war correspondent for the Soviet Information Bureau and the newspapers “Krasnaya Zvezda” and “Pravda”, on the pages of which a number of frontline essays were published, as well as the first chapters of the novel “They Fought for their Country”. Mikhail Sholokhov took part in the battles near Smolensk on the Western Front, near Rostov on the Southern Front, on the Volga, visited the Southwestern, Stalingrad and 3rd Belorussian fronts, passed the front roads from the Volga and Don to the border with Germany and Koenigsberg.

For participation in the Great Patriotic War the writer was awarded medals "For the Defense of Moscow", "For the Defense of Stalingrad", "For Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945", "For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945", "Twenty years of victory in the Great Patriotic War".

On September 23, 1945, a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was issued on awarding the writer with the Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st class for merits during the Great Patriotic War, for patriotic work in the press during the Second World War and in connection with the publication of 10,000 issues of the newspaper “Pravda”.

Among the many awards, this order was considered one of the main and still remains the most outstanding sign of the Great Victory. It was the first order of the USSR to appear during the war: it was established by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet on May 20, 1942. It was often awarded immediately after a valiant deed, right on the battlefield, during a combat situation to raise the military spirit of soldiers and as an example to follow.

The award had two classes. The list of those awarded with the Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st class included both people and military units, settlements, enterprises and institutions.

The award of the Order of the Patriotic War to Mikhail Sholokhov took place in October 1945 in the Kremlin, and was presented to the writer by the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR Mikhail Kalinin.

Nadezhda Rasskazova