Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov was born on May, 24,
1905, in the village of Kruzhilin, Stanitsa Vyoshenskaya, Donetsk District of
the Don Army Region (now the Sholokhov District of the Rostov Region).
In 1910 the Sholokhovs moved to the village of Karghin
where at the age of 7 Misha was admitted to the boys’ parochial school. From
1914 till 1918 he attended boys’ schools of Moscow, Boguchar, Vyoshenskaya.
In 1920-1922 he served in the stanitsa’s Revolutionary
Committee, worked as teacher for adult education in the village of Latyshev, as
clerk in the purchasing office of the Don Provision Committee in Stanitsa
Karghinskaya, as tax inspector in Stanitsa Bukanovskaya.
In October of 1922 he left for Moscow, where he worked
as loader, bricklayer, accountant in the housing office in Krasnaya Presnya. He
got acquainted with men of letters, attended the sessions in the literary
society “Molodaya Gvardiya”. At this time young Sholokhov acquired his first
literary experience. In the autumn of 1923 the newspaper “Yunosheskaya Pravda”
published two of his feuilletons – “A Trial” and “The Three”.
On the December of 1923 he returned to the Don. On
January, 11, 1924, he was wedded in the Bukanovskaya church with Mariya
Petrovna Gromoslavskaya, the daughter of the former stanitsa’s ataman.
On December, 14, 1924, M.A. Sholokhov published his
first work of fiction, the story “The Birthmark” in the newspaper “Molodoy
Leninets” (the “Young Leninist”), then he joined the Russian Association of the
Proletarian Writers.
Sholokhov’s stories “A Shephered”, “The Shibalkovs’
Kin”, “Bastard”, “Deadly Enemy”, “Alyoshka’s Heart”, “A Wife for Two Husbands”,
“A Whirlpool”, a tale “The Way the Life Goes” appeared on pages of the central
periodicals, and in 1926 the books of collected stories “The Don Stories”, “The
Tulip Steppe” (“Lazorevaya Steppe”) was published.
In 1925 Mikhail Aleksandrovich began writing the novel
“And Quiet Flows the Don”. Those years the Sholokhovs lived in Karghinskaya,
then in Bukanovskaya, and from 1926 in Vyoshenskaya.
In 1928 the journal “Oktyabr” began publishing the
novel “And Quiet Flows the Don”.
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov was
the laureate of the Nobel, State and Lenin prizes in literature, he was twice
the Hero of Socialist Labour, the full Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences,
the conferee of the Honoured Doctor’s Degree of Law of Saint-Andrews
University in Scotland, of the Philosophy Doctor’s Degree of the Leipzig
University in Germany, of the Philology Doctor’s Degree of the Rostov State
University, the Deputy of the USSR Supreme Soviet of all convocations. He was
rewarded with six Orders of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution, other
rewards. In Stanitsa Vyoshenskaya during his life time his bronze bust was
erected. This list of diplomas, rewards, honoured titles and social
responsibilities of the writer is far from being complete.
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