News

Kruzhilin Memorial and Historical Complex

The Monument “To the Cossacks of the Quiet Don”

In the surroundings of Kruzhilin Village, a sculptural composition “To the Cossacks of the “Quiet Don” is set up on the mound piled up at the crossroads. Tourists often call it a monument to Grigory Melekhov. The sculptor must have managed to embody in the image of a Cossack on horseback the features typical for the protagonist of the novel “And Quiet Flows the Don”.

The author of the sculptural composition is N.V. Mozhayev, Honoured Artist of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, the Sholokhov Prize winner. His co-authors are: E.M. Mozhayeva and N.N. Shcherbakov, Honoured Worker of Arts of Ukraine. The architect is V.I. Voloshin. The material is bronze. The dimensions are: two-full-sized, the height is 6 m, the total height with the barrow is 14 m, the weight is 8 tons.

The concept of the composition was developed by N.V. Mozhayev and N.N. Schcherbakov in 1956, during the preparations for the exhibition dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the Great October Revolution. The sculpture model initially named “Trumpeter” was made of bronze (70 sm tall). Later the composition was called “Eaglet”, then “In the Don Steppes” and only in 1995, after the opening ceremony, it was named “To the Cossacks of the Quiet Don”.

The model was exhibited in Moscow, Brussels (Belgium) and was awarded the Lenin Comsomol Prize. It was acquired by the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture, and the work was set out in the Kharkov Museum of Fine Arts. In 1982, N.V. Mozhayev presented M.A. Sholokhov with a plaster model of the sculpture called at that time “Eaglet”. Now the present is in the exposition of the Memorial House-Museum of M.A.Sholokhov in Stanitsa Vyoshenskaya.

I.A. Bondarenko, the First Secretary of the Rostov Regional Communist Party Committee, got interested in the sculpture and proposed to cast the monument two-full-sized and to set it up at the north side of the road at the entrance to Rostov-on-Don.