Mikhail Sholokhov

Mikhail Sholokhov was a Russian writer who received a Nobel prize for his epic novel 'Tikhiy Don'.

He was born in 1905 into a Cossack family of farmers in Kruzhilin, Veshenskaya, Rostov province in Southern Russia. His high school studies were interrupted by the Russian revolution and the Civil War, in which he fought on the side of the revolutionaries and joined the Red Army. From 1922-24 he lived in Moscow, where he attended "writers seminars" and published his early works: "A Test" and "The Birthmark". In 1924 he married Maria Gromoslavskaya in his native town, and the couple had four children.

His first book, "Donskie Rasskazy" (1925), exposed the bitter divide among the Russian people during and after the Civil War. His epic novel "And Quiet Flows the Don", published in parts during 1928-40, shows the turbulent life of Cossacks during the dramatic events of the Russian revolution and Civil War. The main character, Grigori Melekhov, was based on a historical prototype, 'Kharlampi Ermakov', a Cossack who opposed the Communists and was imprisoned and executed in 1929. Sholokhov's account of the conflict between Cossacks and Communists caused a suspension of publication in 1929, but he managed to get permission from Joseph Stalin to continue the publication. The novel had over 100 million copies in print, translated in 90+ languages worldwide.

Sholokhov was only 22 in 1928, when he delivered the massive manuscript of "Quiet Flows the Don" (book 1) to a Soviet publisher. It took him almost 14 years to complete the novel of four books in 1940. This led to a suggestion by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn that Sholokhov used the work of another Cossack writer, Fyodor Kryukov (who died in 1920), for some parts of this epic work.

Sholokhov had a lifelong political career. He was a co-chairman of the Soviet Writers Union from the 1930s to his death in 1984. He traveled in western Europe on several occasions, and also accompanied Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to the US in 1959. He was awarded the 1965 Nobel Prize for Literature for his novels and stories about the Cossacks in Russia, becoming the first and only officially sanctioned Soviet writer to win the honor.

Sholokhov took a hardline position against dissident writers, such as Boris Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn, Sinyavsky and Daniel. In 1965 he joined the side of Leonid Brezhnev in the restoration of the political image of Joseph Stalin. Such restoration was opposed by such figures as Andrei Sakharov, Valentin Kataev, Korney Ivanovich Chukovskiy, Oleg Efremov, and Maya Plisetskaya. Sholokhov remained a hard-liner during the 60s and 70s. In late 70s he suffered from diabetes and had a stroke, and later developed a throat cancer. He was in denial of his medical condition. Shortly before his death he rejected the doctor's advise and interrupted his treatment at the Kremlin Hospital. Instead, he returned to his native village and died there on February 21, 1984.