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Karghin Memorial and Historical Complex

Parish School in Stanitsa Karghinskaya

In Karghinskaya there is preserved the parish school, where M.A. Sholokhov studied during 1912–1914.

In the memorial classroom there is a three-seated desk, at which young Sholokhov learned reading and writing. The classroom interior was reconstructed according to the reminiscences of the writer’s classmates and old residents of the stanitsa.

In the three other rooms there is an exhibition “Public Education in the Don Country” telling about upbringing and educating children in the Cossack family, about the way the children were educated in the villages and stanitsas of the Don Army Region, and about the main stages in the Soviet school development.

At the time the would-be writer was schooled, the following subjects were taught: religion, Church Slavonic, Russian (reading, writing, grammar) and sums. As his classmates recollect, at school Misha was inquisitive, in class he was confident, during the breaks he was lively and quick, liked joking and telling funny stories, what made him very popular among his classmates.

Misha’s school teacher was M.G. Kopylov. In the novel “And Quiet Flows the Don” he is introduced under his real name.

The writer remembered his first school: in 1960, having received the Lenin Prize for his novel “Virgin Soil Upturned”, he entirely donated it for the construction of a new school in Stanitsa Karghinskaya. M.A. Sholokhov sent a telegram to his countrymen:  “On coming to my native land I am happy to inform my dear countrymen, that the construction of a new school in Stanitsa Karghinskaya, according to the Resolution of the RSFSR Council of Ministers, is going to start this year. My Lenin Prize will be entirely granted for the construction of a new school instead of the old one which I attended long ago. Many hugs to my countrymen of Karghinskaya. Yours. Mikhail Sholokhov”.

While the school building was being constructed Sholokhov closely attended to the construction matters, helped in supplying with building materials. In 1964, a new school with spacious classrooms and well-equipped studies was built. In 2003, it was named after Sholokhov.