Museum Collection
Hunting with Sholokhov
The slide depicting young M.A.Sholokhov on hunting entered to the Museum-Reserve collection early in 2013.
Sholokhov, beardless, wearing a field-shirt, riding-breeches and boots is shown standing amid his friends who came from Moscow. Next to the writer are: Ivan Terentiyevich Kleimyonov, his wife, Margarita Konstantinovna, Vasily Mikhailovich Kudashov and Pavel Ivanovich Zaitsev, the husband of M.P.Sholokhova’s sister.
The slide was presumably made in 1933, when the Kleimyonovs and the Kudashovs came to see M.A.Sholokhov in Stanitsa Vyoshenskaya. It was said about in the letter of Sholokhov to E.G.Levitskaya , of September, 1, 1933, and is shown in the photographs made by someone from Sholokhov’s inner circle by the request of I.T.Kleimyonov. On those days the friends went hunting and fishing together.
The writer V.M.Kudashov (1902 – 1941) was one of Sholokhov’s close friends. They got acquainted in 1922, when Sholokhov came to Moscow to study. The young writers were linked with sincere friendship which was interrupted by the Great Patriotic war.
I.T.Kleimyonov (1899 – 1938) was a scientist, one of the organizers and leaders of rocket technology developments in the USSR, the son-in-law of E.G.Levitskaya, who edited the first publications of Sholokhov’s novel “The Quiet Don”. The Sholokhovs and the Kleimyonovs were friends. In 1938, when Ivan Terentiyevich was arrested by the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs on charges of participation in the anti-Soviet organization in Berlin, Sholokhov tried to save his friend; he applied to Beriya, but by the verdict of the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court I.T.Kleimyonov had already been shot.
In this picture Sholokhov and his friends are young, strong and full of hunting enthusiasm. They are unaware of what is kept in store for them – all hardships, grief and losses.
Larisa Bukina
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