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The Front Notes of the War Correspondent Sholokhov

The war draft notes were made by the writer when attending the front as a war correspondent for the Sovinformbureau, newspapers “Pravda” and “Krasnaya Zvezda”. The writer’s younger son M.M. Sholokhov handed them to the Museum in the December of  2008.

Here are the lines from the front notes of the war correspondent Sholokhov:

1. “Now the situation is such that you walk like a ghost, unaware, whether you are alive or dead. It was an awful day, and a night is coming. Soon I will fall down and won’t rise from fatigue without a sleep. It is so hard for me now, that it’s all the same for me, whether to live or to die”. (From a soldier’s letter. 4.2.45. Under Konigsberg).
2. To the Kaluga Region: “What cruel battles are going on under this damned Konigsberg and how difficult it is without sleeping, in the campaign, soaked to the skin, besides, under bullets and shells raining. Ah, Marusya, I don’t know if I can survive this difficult and severe time of the cruel battles, or not”.
3. “…The mortar made 7725 shots. A rupture of the barrel muzzle, the gun-carriage bipod is damaged, the MП-41 sight is broken. The mine flew out from the barrel and fell down in the neutral location. The mortar fired methodically (each 50 seconds a shot), keeping up our reconnaissance in force. Presumably: the rupture was caused by metal fatigue…
4. “A Red Army man of one of the military units said: “The people have got tired. I am sick and tired of the war, but its end is far beyond reach. I have to make war as well as to toil hard, but I’ve been exhausted already”.

During the war years Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov was a war correspondent for the Sovinformbureau, newspapers “Pravda” and “Krasnaya Zvezda”. He published his front essays, the short story “The Science of Hatred”, the first chapters of the novel “They Fought for Their Country”. Sholokhov contributed his State Prize conferred for his novel “And Quiet Flows the Don” into the Country Defence Fund, then he bought for his own money four rocket launchers for the front.

For his participation in the Great Patriotic war colonel Sholokhov was awarded with the Order of the Patriotic War of the First Degree, medals “For Defending Moscow”, “For Defending Stalingrad”, “For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945”, “Twenty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War”.