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Vyoshensky Memorial and Historical Complex

The Old House of M.A.Sholokhov

The house was built in the XIX–XX centuries by Nikanor Georgiyevich Karghin, the owner of the Vyoshensky Post and Telegraph Department.

After the Civil War, the house was inherited by his son, a teacher of the Bazki school. In 1928, the family of M.A.Sholokhov for the first time bought their own house and estate in Stanitsa Vyoshenskaya (now the house in 103, Sholokhov Street), where they lived until 1935. Before their moving in, major repairs of the house and outbuildings were carried out. A barn for hay and droshky was built. Initially, Mikhail Alexandrovich, his wife, Mariya Petrovna, and their daughter Svetlana lived in the house. Later, in 1929, the writer’s mother, Anastasiya Danilovna, joined the family to live together.

In this house the writer went on working over his novel “And Quiet Flows the Don”, which had been started in Stanitsa Karghinskaya. Here, the main part of this novel and the first chapters of “Virgin Soil Upturned” were written.

After the writer’s family moved into another house, his wife’s parents, Pyotr Yakovlevich Gromoslavsky and Mariya Fyodorovna Gromoslavskaya lived there.

Later, in different years, the owners of the house were the families of L.P. Zaitseva and P.V.Melnikova.

In 1981, the National M.A.Sholokhov Museum-Reserve redeemed the household. After repair and restoration work, on May 24, 1987, the house was opened as a site of the Museum Memorial Complex. The Museum exhibition tells about the life and work of the writer in Stanitsa Vyoshenskaya during 1928–1935