Sholokhov Nobel Prize in Literature. How Mikhail Sholokhov received the Nobel Prize in Literature

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin handed out the Nobel Prize to friends

In December 1933, the Paris press wrote: Without a doubt, I.A. Bunin - for last years, - the most powerful figure in Russian fiction and poetry», « the king of literature confidently and equally shook hands with the crowned monarch».

The Russian emigration applauded. In Russia, however, the news that a Russian emigrant received the Nobel Prize was treated very caustically. After all, Bunin negatively perceived the events of 1917 and emigrated to France. Ivan Alekseevich himself experienced emigration very hard, was actively interested in the fate of his abandoned homeland, and during the Second World War he categorically refused all contacts with the Nazis, having moved to the Maritime Alps in 1939, returning from there to Paris only in 1945.

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin. 1901

It is known that Nobel laureates have the right to decide for themselves how to spend the money they receive. Someone invests in the development of science, someone in charity, someone in own business. Bunin, a creative person and devoid of "practical ingenuity", disposed of his bonus, which amounted to 170,331 crowns, completely irrationally.

Poet and literary critic Zinaida Shakhovskaya recalled: “ Returning to France, Ivan Alekseevich ... apart from money, began to arrange feasts, distribute "allowances" to emigrants, and donate funds to support various societies. Finally, on the advice of well-wishers, he invested the remaining amount in some kind of “win-win business” and was left with nothing.».

Ivan Bunin is the first émigré writer to be published in Russia. True, the first publications of his stories appeared already in the 1950s, after the death of the writer. Some of his novels and poems were published in his homeland only in the 1990s.

Dear God, what are you for?
He gave us passions, thoughts and worries,
Thirst for business, glory and comfort?
Joyful cripples, idiots,
The leper is the happiest of all.
(I. Bunin. September, 1917)

Boris Pasternak refused the Nobel Prize

Boris Pasternak was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature "for significant achievements in modern lyric poetry, as well as for continuing the traditions of the great Russian epic novel" annually from 1946 to 1950. In 1958, last year's Nobel laureate Albert Camus again proposed his candidacy, and on October 23, Pasternak became the second Russian writer to be awarded this prize.

The writers' environment in the poet's homeland took this news extremely negatively, and already on October 27, Pasternak was unanimously expelled from the Writers' Union of the USSR, at the same time submitting a petition to deprive Pasternak of Soviet citizenship. In the USSR, Pasternak was associated with receiving the award only with his novel Doctor Zhivago.

The Literary Gazette wrote: "Pasternak received "thirty pieces of silver", for which he used Nobel Prize. He was rewarded for agreeing to play the role of bait on the rusty hook of anti-Soviet propaganda ... An inglorious end awaits the resurrected Judas, Doctor Zhivago, and his author, whose lot will be popular contempt ".

The mass campaign launched against Pasternak forced him to refuse the Nobel Prize. The poet sent a telegram to the Swedish Academy, in which he wrote: Because of the significance that the award awarded to me has received in the society to which I belong, I must refuse it. Do not take my voluntary refusal as an insult».

It is worth noting that in the USSR until 1989, even in the school curriculum on literature about Pasternak's work, there was no mention. The director Eldar Ryazanov was the first to decide to massively acquaint the Soviet people with the creative work of Pasternak. In his comedy "The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath!" (1976) he included the poem "There Will Be No One in the House", transforming it into an urban romance, performed by the bard Sergei Nikitin. Ryazanov later included in his film " Love affair at work"an excerpt from another poem by Pasternak -" Loving others is a heavy cross ..." (1931). True, he sounded in a farcical context. But it is worth noting that at that time the very mention of Pasternak's poems was a very bold step.

Easy to wake up and see
Shake verbal rubbish from the heart
And live without clogging in the future,
All this is not a big trick.
(B. Pasternak, 1931)

Mikhail Sholokhov, receiving the Nobel Prize, did not bow to the monarch

Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1965 for his novel The Quiet Flows the Flows Flows the Flows Flows and went down in history as the only Soviet writer to receive this award with the consent of the Soviet leadership. The diploma of the laureate says "in recognition of the artistic strength and honesty that he showed in his Don epic about the historical phases of the life of the Russian people."

Presenter of the award Soviet writer Gustavus Adolphus VI called him "one of the most distinguished writers of our time". Sholokhov did not bow to the king, as prescribed by the rules of etiquette. Some sources claim that he did it intentionally with the words: “We, the Cossacks, do not bow to anyone. Here in front of the people - please, but I will not be in front of the king ... "

Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn, the commander of a sound reconnaissance battery, who rose to the rank of captain during the war years and was awarded two military orders, was arrested in 1945 by front-line counterintelligence for anti-Sovietism. Sentence - 8 years in camps and life exile. He went through a camp in New Jerusalem near Moscow, Marfinskaya "sharashka" and the Special Ekibastuz camp in Kazakhstan. In 1956, Solzhenitsyn was rehabilitated, and since 1964 Alexander Solzhenitsyn devoted himself to literature. At the same time he worked immediately on 4 major works: "The Gulag Archipelago", " cancer corps”, “Red Wheel” and “In the first circle”. In the USSR in 1964 they published the story "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", and in 1966 the story "Zakhar-Kalita".

On October 8, 1970, Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize "for the moral strength gleaned from the tradition of great Russian literature." This was the reason for the persecution of Solzhenitsyn in the USSR. In 1971, all the writer's manuscripts were confiscated, and in the next 2 years, all his publications were destroyed. In 1974, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was issued, according to which, for the systematic commission of actions incompatible with belonging to the citizenship of the USSR and damaging the USSR, Alexander Solzhenitsyn was deprived of Soviet citizenship and deported from the USSR.

Citizenship was returned to the writer only in 1990, and in 1994 he and his family returned to Russia and became actively involved in public life.

Nobel Prize winner Joseph Brodsky in Russia was convicted of parasitism

Iosif Alexandrovich Brodsky began to write poetry at the age of 16. Anna Akhmatova predicted to him hard life and glorious creative destiny. In 1964, in Leningrad, a criminal case was opened against the poet on charges of parasitism. He was arrested and sent into exile in the Arkhangelsk region, where he spent a year.

In 1972, Brodsky turned to Secretary General Brezhnev with a request to work in his homeland as a translator, but his request remained unanswered, and he was forced to emigrate. Brodsky first lives in Vienna, in London, and then moves to the United States, where he becomes a professor at New York, Michigan and other universities in the country.

On December 10, 1987, Joseph Brosky was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his comprehensive work, saturated with the clarity of thought and the passion of poetry." It is worth saying that Brodsky, after Vladimir Nabokov, is the second Russian writer who writes in English as his native language.

The sea was not visible. In the white mist
swaddled on all sides of us, absurd
it was thought that the ship was going to land -
if it was a ship at all,
and not a clot of fog, as if poured
who whitened in milk.

(B. Brodsky, 1972)

Interesting fact

For the Nobel Prize in different time put forward, but never received it, such famous people like Mahatma Gandhi, Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Franklin Roosevelt, Nicholas Roerich and Leo Tolstoy.

Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov is one of the most famous Russians of the period. His work covers the most important events for our country - the revolution of 1917, the Civil War, the formation of a new government and the Great Patriotic War. In this article we will talk a little about the life of this writer and try to consider his works.

Short biography. Childhood and youth

During civil wars We were with the Reds and rose to the rank of commander. Then, after graduation, he moved to Moscow. Here he received his first education. After moving to Boguchar, he entered the gymnasium. Upon graduation, he returned to the capital again, he wanted to get higher education but was unable to do so. To support himself, he had to get a job. During this short period, he changed several specialties, continuing to engage in self-education and literature.

The first work of the writer was published in 1923. Sholokhov begins to cooperate with newspapers and magazines, writes feuilletons for them. In 1924, the story "The Mole" was published in "The Young Leninist", the first of the Don cycle.

True fame and the last years of life

The list of works by M. A. Sholokhov should begin with " Quiet Don". It was this epic that brought the author real fame. Gradually, it became popular not only in the USSR, but also in other countries. The second great work of the writer was "Virgin Soil Upturned", awarded the Lenin Prize.

During the Great Patriotic War, Sholokhov was at this time he wrote many stories dedicated to this terrible time.

In 1965, the year became significant for the writer - he was awarded the Nobel Prize for the novel Quiet Flows the Don. Starting from the 60s, Sholokhov practically stopped writing, dedicating free time fishing and hunting. He gave most of his income to charity and led a quiet life.

The writer died on February 21, 1984. The body was buried on the banks of the Don in the courtyard of his own house.

The life that Sholokhov lived is full of unusual and bizarre events. We will present a list of the writer's works below, and now let's talk a little more about the fate of the author:

• Sholokhov was the only writer who received the Nobel Prize with the approval of the authorities. The author was also called "Stalin's favorite".
• When Sholokhov decided to woo one of the daughters of Gromoslavsky, the former Cossack chieftain, he offered to marry the eldest of the girls, Marya. The writer, of course, agreed. The couple lived in marriage for almost 60 years. During this time, they had four children.
• After the release of The Quiet Flows the Don, critics had doubts that the author of such a large and complex novel was really such a young author. By order of Stalin himself, a commission was established, which conducted a study of the text and made a conclusion: the epic was indeed written by Sholokhov.

Features of creativity

The works of Sholokhov are inextricably linked with the image of the Don and the Cossacks (the list, titles and plots of the books are direct evidence of this). It is from the life of his native places that he draws images, motives and themes. The writer himself spoke about it this way: “I was born on the Don, grew up there, studied and formed as a person ...”.

Despite the fact that Sholokhov focuses on describing the life of the Cossacks, his works are not limited to regional and local topics. On the contrary, using their example, the author manages to raise not only the problems of the country, but universal and philosophical ones. The writer's works reflect deep historical processes. Another distinctive feature of Sholokhov's work is connected with this - the desire to artistically reflect the turning points in the life of the USSR and how people who fell into this whirlpool of events felt.

Sholokhov was prone to monumentalism, he was attracted by issues related to social changes and the fate of peoples.

Early works

Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov began to write very early. The works (prose always remained preferable to him) of those years were devoted to the Civil War, in which he himself took a direct part, although he was still quite a youth.

Mastered the writing skill of Sholokhov with small form, that is, from stories that were published in three collections:

• "Azure steppe";
• "Don stories";
• "About Kolchak, nettles and other things."

Despite the fact that these works did not go beyond social realism and glorified Soviet power in many ways, they stood out against the background of other works of Sholokhov's contemporaries. The fact is that already in these years, Mikhail Alexandrovich paid special attention to the life of the people and the description of folk characters. The writer tried to portray a more realistic and less romanticized picture of the revolution. There is cruelty, blood, betrayal in the works - Sholokhov tries not to smooth out the severity of time.

At the same time, the author does not romanticize death at all and does not poeticize cruelty. He places emphasis differently. The main thing is kindness and the ability to preserve humanity. Sholokhov wanted to show how "ugly the Don Cossacks simply died in the steppes." The originality of the writer's work lies in the fact that he raised the problem of revolution and humanism, interpreting actions from the point of view of morality. And most of all, Sholokhov was worried about fratricide, which accompanies any civil war. The tragedy of many of his heroes was that they had to shed their own blood.

Quiet Don

Perhaps the most famous book that Sholokhov wrote. We will continue the list of works by her, since the novel opens the next stage of the writer's work. The author took up writing the epic in 1925, immediately after the publication of the stories. Initially, he did not plan such a large-scale work, wishing only to portray the fate of the Cossacks in revolutionary times and their participation in the "suppression of the revolution." Then the book was called "Donshchina". But Sholokhov did not like the first pages he wrote, since the motives of the Cossacks would not have been clear to the average reader. Then the writer decided to start his story in 1912 and end in 1922. The meaning of the novel has changed, as has the title. Work on the work was carried out for 15 years. IN final version the book was published in 1940.

"Virgin Soil Upturned"

Another novel that was created by M. Sholokhov for several decades. A list of the writer's works is impossible without mentioning this book, since it is considered the second most popular after The Quiet Flows the Don. "Virgin Soil Upturned" consists of two books, the first was completed in 1932, and the second - in the late 50s.

The work describes the process of collectivization on the Don, witnessed by Sholokhov himself. The first book can generally be called a report from the scene. The author very realistically and colorfully recreates the drama of this time. Here there is dispossession, and meetings of farmers, and the killing of people, and the slaughter of cattle, and the plundering of collective farm grain, and the women's revolt.

The plot of both parts is based on the confrontation of class enemies. The action begins with a double plot - the secret arrival of Polovtsev and the arrival of Davydov, and also ends with a double denouement. The whole book rests on the opposition of reds and whites.

Sholokhov, works about the war: list

Books dedicated to the Great Patriotic War:

• The novel "They fought for the Motherland";
• The stories "The Science of Hatred", "The Fate of Man";
• Essays "In the South", "On the Don", "Cossacks", "In the Cossack Collective Farms", "Infamy", "Prisoners of War", "In the South";
• Publicism - “The struggle continues”, “The word about the Motherland”, “The executioners cannot escape the court of peoples!”, “Light and darkness”.

During the war, Sholokhov worked as a war correspondent for Pravda. The stories and essays describing these terrible events had some distinctive features, which identified Sholokhov as a battle writer and even survived in his post-war prose.

The author's essays can be called a chronicle of the war. Unlike other writers working in the same direction, Sholokhov never directly expressed his view of events, the characters spoke for him. Only at the end did the writer allow himself to sum up a little.

Sholokhov's works, despite the themes, retain a humanistic orientation. At the same time, it changes a little main character. It becomes a person who is able to realize the significance of his place in the world struggle and understand that he is responsible to his comrades-in-arms, relatives, children, life itself and history.

"They fought for their country"

We continue to disassemble creative legacy that Sholokhov left (list of works). The writer perceives war not as a fatal inevitability, but as a socio-historical phenomenon that tests the moral and ideological qualities of people. From the fates of individual characters, a picture of an epoch-making event is formed. Such principles formed the basis of the novel "They Fought for the Motherland", which, unfortunately, was never completed.

According to Sholokhov's plan, the work was to consist of three parts. The first was to describe the pre-war events and the struggle of the Spaniards against the Nazis. And already in the second and third, the struggle of the Soviet people against the invaders would be described. However, no part of the novel was ever published. Only a few chapters have been released.

A distinctive feature of the novel is the presence of not only large-scale battle scenes, but also sketches of everyday soldier life, which often have a humorous coloring. At the same time, the soldiers are well aware of their responsibility to the people and the country. Their thoughts about home and native places become tragic as their regiment retreats. Therefore, they cannot justify the hopes placed on them.

Summing up

Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov passed a huge creative path. All works of the author, especially when considered in chronological order, confirm this. If you take early stories and later, the reader will see how much the skill of the writer has grown. At the same time, he managed to maintain many motives, such as loyalty to his duty, humanity, devotion to family and country, etc.

But the works of the writer have not only artistic and aesthetic value. First of all, Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov strove to be a chronicler (biography, list of books and diary entries confirm this).

Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov was born on May 24, 1905 in the Kruzhilin village of the village of Vyoshenskaya in the Donetsk region of the Don Cossacks (now the Sholokhov district Rostov region).

At the same time, Sholokhov took part in the handwritten newspaper " New world", played in the performances of the Karginsky People's House, for which he anonymously composed the plays "General the Victorious" and "An Extraordinary Day".

In October 1922 he moved to Moscow, where he worked as a loader, a bricklayer, and an accountant in a housing department on Krasnaya Presnya. At the same time, he attended classes of the Young Guard literary association.

In December 1924, the newspaper "Young Leninist" published his story "The Mole", which opened the cycle of Don stories: "Shepherd", "Ilyukha", "Foal", "Azure Steppe", "Family Man" and others. They were published in Komsomol periodicals, and then compiled three collections, "Don Stories" and "Azure Steppe" (both - 1926) and "About Kolchak, Nettles and Others" (1927). "Don Stories" was read in manuscript by Sholokhov's countryman, writer Alexander Serafimovich, who wrote a preface to the collection.

In 1925, the writer began to create the novel "Quiet Don" about the dramatic fate of the Don Cossacks during the First World War and the Civil War. During these years, together with his family, he lived in the village of Karginskaya, then in Bukanovskaya, and since 1926 - in Vyoshenskaya. In 1928, the first two books of the epic novel were published in the October magazine. The release of the third book (the sixth part) was delayed due to a rather sympathetic portrayal of the participants in the anti-Bolshevik Upper Don uprising of 1919. To release the book, Sholokhov turned to the writer Maxim Gorky, with the help of whom he obtained permission from Joseph Stalin to publish this part of the novel without cuts in 1932, and in 1934 he basically completed the fourth - last part, but began to rewrite it again, not without tightening ideological pressure. The seventh part of the fourth book was published in 1937-1938, the eighth - in 1940.

The work has been translated into many languages.

In 1932, the first book of his novel "Virgin Soil Upturned" about collectivization was published. The work was declared a perfect piece of literature socialist realism and soon entered into all school programs becoming mandatory for study.

During the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945), Mikhail Sholokhov worked as a war correspondent for the Soviet Information Bureau, the Pravda and Krasnaya Zvezda newspapers. He published front-line essays, the story "The Science of Hatred" (1942), and the novel "They Fought for the Motherland" (1943-1944), which was conceived as a trilogy, but was not completed.

The writer donated the State Prize, awarded in 1941 for the novel Quiet Flows the Don, to the USSR Defense Fund, and purchased four new rocket launchers for the front at his own expense.

In 1956, his story "The Fate of a Man" was published.

In 1965, the writer won the Nobel Prize in Literature "for the artistic power and integrity of the epic about the Don Cossacks at a turning point for Russia." Sholokhov donated the prize for the construction of a school in his homeland - in the village of Vyoshenskaya, Rostov Region.

In recent years, Mikhail Sholokhov has been working on the novel They Fought for the Motherland. At this time, the village of Vyoshenskaya became a place of pilgrimage. Sholokhov was visited by visitors not only from Russia, but also from various parts of the world.

Sholokhov was engaged social activities. He was a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the first to ninth convocations. Since 1934 - Member of the Board of the Union of Writers of the USSR. Member of the World Peace Council.

In the last years of his life, Sholokhov was seriously ill. He suffered two strokes, diabetes, then throat cancer.

On February 21, 1984, Mikhail Sholokhov died in the village of Vyoshenskaya, where he was buried on the banks of the Don.

The writer was an honorary doctor of philology from the Rostov and Leipzig universities, an honorary doctor of law from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

Since 1939 he was a full member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

Mikhail Sholokhov was twice awarded the title Hero of Socialist Labor (1967, 1980). Laureate of the State Prize of the USSR (1941), the Lenin Prize (1960), and the Nobel Prize (1965). Among his awards are six Orders of Lenin, the Order October revolution, Order of the Patriotic War, 1st class, medals "For the Defense of Moscow", "For the Defense of Stalingrad", "For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945".

In 1984, in his homeland in the village of Vyoshenskaya, Rostov Region, a State Museum-Reserve M.A. Sholokhov.

Since 1985, the Sholokhov Spring, the All-Russian Literary and Folklore Festival, has been held annually in the village of Vyoshenskaya. dedicated to the day writer's birth.

Since 1924, Mikhail Sholokhov was married to the daughter of the former Cossack chieftain Maria Gromoslavskaya (1902-1992), who after marriage worked as the writer's personal secretary. Four children were born in the family - Svetlana (born in 1926), Alexander (1930-1992), Mikhail (1935-2013) and Maria (born in 1938).

Svetlana is the scientific secretary of the M.A. Sholokhov, after graduating from Leningrad University, she worked as a journalist in the Rabotnitsa magazine and other printed publications.

After graduating from the Timiryazev Academy, Alexander worked in the Nikitsky Botanical Garden in Yalta.

Graduated from the Faculty of Biology of Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov and the Faculty of History and Philosophy of Rostov state university. Most of his life he was engaged in social activities, headed the Public Council under the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for the Rostov Region, organized the social and patriotic movement "Union of Cossacks of the Don Cossacks Region" and was its first ataman.

Maria graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov, worked as a journalist in various print media.

The grandson of the writer Alexander Mikhailovich Sholokhov is the director of the M.A. Sholokhov.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources

Vladimir VASILIEV

Sholokhov and the Nobel Prize: background

The names of the Nobel Prize winners were announced by the Committee in the press on October 15, 1965. A month later, on November 16, in a conversation with Swedish journalists, Sholokhov noted that “the awarding of the Nobel Prize to him was, to a certain extent, a surprise for him,” and during a press conference in Stockholm, as one of the Scandinavian newspapers wrote, “he even allows himself joke about it” and agrees with the claim that he wins the Nobel Prize “thirty years late”.

The idea of ​​Sholokhov as the most worthy candidate for the Nobel Prize first sounded in the foreign press, in particular in Swedish newspapers, in 1935, when Quiet Flows the Don had not yet been completed, but its author was already known as “world famous”, “world writer ”, and the novel - “Soviet“ War and Peace ””. Completed in 1940, “Quiet Flows the Flows of the Don” could not be considered by the Swedish Academy as a work worthy of the Nobel Prize due to political considerations related to the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940. Breakthrough in the fight against Nazi Germany, and subsequently the decisive contribution to the victory over fascism in World War II, to a large extent raised the world prestige of the Soviet Union, and the name of Sholokhov, as the undisputed Nobel laureate, once again became one of the dominant achievements in world literature of the 20th century. “In the field of literature,” Literaturnaya Gazeta wrote in 1946, “in recent years, the candidacy of M. Sholokhov, a writer who is well known and loved in Sweden, has been repeatedly nominated.” However, the Cold War, which became especially aggravated in the world in 1948-1953 and took on new, more sophisticated forms from the mid-1950s, left a powerful imprint on the state of everyday world humanitarian thought, which descended to elementary Soviet propaganda propaganda. “The Western reader,” H. McLean and W. Vickery wrote about this time, “gets an idea of ​​Soviet literature not from ... Soviet literature itself, and not even from critical reviews. His idea of ​​Soviet literature was formed from newspaper articles ... about the events of Moscow literary life ... In the West, we tend to discuss ... the social behavior of Soviet writers ... rather than talk about the aesthetic merits or style of their work ... Truly literary works ... served us most often as sources for sociological conclusions. Literature in the proper sense did not interest us” (Maclean H. and Vickery W. The Year of Protest. New York, 1956. P. 4, 28). A similar mindset found expression in the awarding of the Nobel Prizes in 1953 to the British Prime Minister W. Churchill (in literature), the father of the Cold War (speech in Fulton in 1946), and to the former US Secretary of Defense, General of the Army J. Marshall, one one of the active initiators of the militaristic revival of West Germany and US hegemony in Europe. In the next volume of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, published hot on the heels of this event, it is noted: “... the awarding of N[obel] prizes, especially for literary works and activities in favor of peace, is often determined by the political interests of reactionary circles.”

The ideological preferences of the Swedish Academy were too obvious, and it seems far from accidental that the Nobel Committee, in the form of objectivity and impartiality, decided to weaken the impression of the emerging practice in awarding prizes and turned to the oldest Russian writer, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences S.N. Sergeev-Tsensky with a request to propose a candidate for the Nobel Prize "no later than February 1954."

“In response to your appeal,” Sergeev-Tsensky wrote to the Nobel Committee, “I consider it an honor to propose the Soviet writer Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1953. A full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Mikhail Sholokhov, in my opinion, as well as in the recognition of my colleagues and the masses of readers, is one of the most outstanding writers of my country. He enjoys worldwide fame as a great artist of the word, masterfully revealing in his works the movements and impulses of the human soul and mind, the complexity of human feelings and relationships.

Hundreds of millions of readers around the world know Sholokhov's novels "Quiet Flows the Don" and "Virgin Soil Upturned" - highly humanistic works, imbued with deep faith in man, in his ability to transform life, make it bright and joyful for everyone.

“Quiet Don”, “Virgin Soil Upturned” and other works by Sholokhov, according to the information at my disposal, were published in the USSR before January 1, 1954 in 412 editions in 55 languages. The total circulation of publications is 19,947,000 copies. Sholokhov's books translated into dozens foreign languages and published large circulations. All this testifies to their extraordinary popularity and usefulness for mankind.

Coming from the common people, from a family of Don Cossacks, Mikhail Sholokhov lives among his countrymen. He closely connects his work with life, the interests of simple Soviet people. In their life and struggle, he draws material for his works, among them he finds the heroes of his books. IN works of art he raises the questions that most concern our contemporaries.

Sholokhov's novel "Quiet Flows the Don", by all accounts, is a classic work of Soviet literature. This is an epic about the Don Cossacks in the turbulent years - 1912–1922. It poses great moral and humanistic problems - about the ways of human development, about the fate of entire classes and individuals. In excellent realistic paintings, the writer reveals light and dark sides life. It shows the struggle against social evil for the triumph of the bright beginnings of life. Love and hate, the joy and suffering of the heroes are described by Sholokhov with great insight, knowledge of life and sympathy for man.

In the novel “Virgin Soil Upturned”, Sholokhov truthfully and with captivating artistic skill shows the restructuring of the old way of peasant life by the collective farm Cossacks. He reveals high moral qualities of the Soviet peasant - the source and basis of his unparalleled feat in creating a new way of life on the basis of collective farming.

Mikhail Sholokhov is one of those major Russian writers who continue and develop the best achievements of Russian classical literature and create excellent examples of realistic art.

The work of Mikhail Sholokhov undoubtedly serves the progress of mankind, the strengthening of friendly ties between the Russian people and the peoples of other countries.

I am deeply convinced that it is Mikhail Sholokhov who has a priority over other writers for receiving the Nobel Prize.

Please accept my assurance of deep respect for you.
Full member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR S. Sergeev-Tsensky”.

The proposal of the Nobel Committee to Sergeev-Tsensky was first discussed in principle, starting with the board of the Writers' Union and ending with the Central Committee of the CPSU, whether to accept it or not, to use it "for a publicly motivated refusal to participate to some extent in the work of this public organization with the exposure of this organization, which is a tool of warmongers, or for a motivated nomination of one of the writers as an active fighter for peace” (B.N. Polevoy - M.A. Suslov, January 21, 1954). When the issue was resolved in favor of the last consideration, the discussion of the candidacy, in particular Sholokhov, began in the same order, and the agreement on the text of the letter that motivated his nomination. Finally, the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the CPSU at a meeting on February 23, 1954 decided:

"1. Accept the proposal of the Union of Soviet Writers of the USSR to nominate the writer Sholokhov M.A. as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1953.

2. To agree with the text of the response of the writer Sergeev-Tsensky to the Nobel Committee at the Swedish Academy presented by the Union of Soviet Writers ...

3. Submit for approval by the Presidium”.

Some time later, the Nobel Committee responded to the submission of Sergeev-Tsensky, dated March 6, 1954: “The Nobel Committee of the Swedish Academy accepted with interest your proposal to award the Nobel Prize to M.A. Sholokhov.

Since offers must come to us no later than February 1st, Your proposal has reached us too late to be discussed for this year.

However, Sholokhov will be nominated as a candidate for the Nobel Prize for 1955, that is, in 1956 (emphasis mine. - V.V.).

In the answer of the Nobel Committee, attention is drawn to a very tangible emphasis on the formal side of resolving the issue. In the Committee's proposal to the Soviet academician, it was said that a candidate for the prize should be submitted "no later than February" (see above). The last words cannot be understood or interpreted otherwise than during the month of February, and not by February 1st. In other words: Sergeev-Tsensky was delayed with an answer for some two or three days, and, as they say in such cases, if there was good will, the formal moment could easily be overcome.

The postponement of Sholokhov's candidacy to 1956 cannot but suggest that the Swedish Academy has already decided on the 1955 Nobel Prize. It was received by the Icelandic writer H. Laskness, the author of the notes "Russian Fairy Tale" (1938, twice visited the USSR in the 30s), full of faith in the socialist transformation of life, laureate of the International Peace Prize (1953), who, having visited the Soviet Union after the death of Stalin in October 1953, began to move away from sharp criticism of bourgeois social relations.

The expectation that Sholokhov received the Nobel Prize in 1956 did not come true either - it was awarded to the Spanish modernist poet J. Jimenez (1881-1958).

The issue of awarding the Nobel Prize to Sholokhov again became aggravated in connection with the publication of B. Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago abroad. Rejected by the editors of Soviet magazines and publishing houses, the novel was transferred by its author in May 1956 abroad and, translated in great haste, was first published on November 15, 1957 in Italian, then - before the end of the year - was released in English, Norwegian, French and German languages. Read by the world's progressive public in an unprecedented rush and received huge press, "Doctor Zhivago", unknown to anyone in the original language until August 24, 1958, was nevertheless accepted by the Nobel Committee for discussion as a work of the "great Russian epic tradition" (although, according to the exact definition of D.S. Likhachev, this is “not even a novel”, but “a kind of autobiography”, and a lyrical autobiography.Even reasonable statements by Sovietologists that “Pasternak’s novel, not published in the USSR ... in in a certain sense cannot at all be considered as a work of Soviet literature”, turned out to be easily overcome and not of significant importance (see: Maclean H. and Vickery W. The Year of Protest, 1956. P. 3).

Since for the first time in history Russian Soviet literature was represented by Pasternak’s novel in its highest achievement, a sharp political struggle unfolded around the candidacy for the Nobel Prize, in which superior forces, even if only in the form of listing only newspapers and magazines and other means of operational information, cannot be taken into account. . “Recently, in the Swedish Pen Club, which unites a significant part of the writers,” G.M. Markov April 7, 1958 - a discussion of the candidates for the Nobel Prize in Literature took place. Four candidates were discussed: Sholokhov, Pasternak, Pound, Moravia. The discussion was in the nature of a referendum. The absolute majority of the participants in the discussion spoke in favor of Sholokhov. Filed his vote for Sholokhov and Prince Wilhelm, exercising patronage over the Pen Club. Thus, the well-disposed Swedish cultural figures consider Sholokhov's chances for the prize to be real.

However, Erik Asklund and Sven Stork, referring to their personal connections with people who are well aware of the Swedish Academy, which awards the prize, they told us that among the highest circles of this academy there is a certain opinion in favor of Pasternak, and we are talking about a possible division of the prize between Sholokhov and Pasternak.

Wishing that justice would prevail with regard to Sholokhov, our Swedish friends expressed their wishes for intensifying the struggle for Sholokhov. The Soviet press could provide significant assistance in favor of Sholokhov. Facts and examples about the international popularity of Sholokhov, about his wide popularity in the Scandinavian countries would play a positive role, as they would strengthen the positions of Sholokhov's supporters. Obviously, other measures are not ruled out, in particular, speeches by the most prominent foreign and Soviet cultural figures on this issue in various print media in Scandinavian and other countries.

The fight over the candidates for the Nobel Prize coincided with a change in strategy in the conduct of the "cold war" of the West and the United States with the East, Asia and "barbarism". If earlier it was waged against socialism in general and as a whole, now its character has assumed more sophisticated and concrete forms. Its goal was to count on the split of the new social system from the inside, to stake on the dismemberment of the “monolith” into “pieces”, the division of the single socialist camp into the countries of the faithful and those opposed to them, and the societies into groups of “mossy reactionaries” and dissidents, into people who are slavishly committed” dilapidated values”, and free individuals and “personalities”. As he put it when he took office as President of the United States, new task in the war against communism, D. Kennedy: “There is no point in talking about massive retaliation, by doing this we only strengthen the red bloc. Now we should look for ways to split this bloc” (Kennedy J.F. The strategy of Peace. New York, 1960. P. 44). In accordance with the "new thinking" and B. Pasternak's novel "was used as a psychological weapon in the Cold War" (Brown E. Russian Literature since the Revolution. New York, 1973. P. 273).

In this situation, the position of Sholokhov the Communist could not be different than it was formulated in the note of the Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU L. Ilyichev and the head of the Department of Culture of the Central Committee of the Party D. Polikarpov dated October 21, 1958: “... if Comrade Sholokhov is awarded the Nobel prize for this year, along with Pasternak, it would be expedient that, as a sign of protest, comrade Sholokhov defiantly refuse it and declare in the press his unwillingness to be the winner of the prize, the award of which is used for anti-Soviet purposes ... ”(Center for the Storage of Modern Documents, fund 5, list 36, file 61, sheet 52).

The realistic assessment of the literary merits of Doctor Zhivago by individual Western critics did not influence the choice of the Swedish Academy and was lost in a host of frank political praises and ideological enthusiasm. Long before the announcement of the Nobel Prize winner, the French weekly Ar, in its issue of January 29, 1958, wrote: “It was not so much the literary, but the political significance of Doctor Zhivago that brought him to the fore.” “Pasternak became famous in the West even before they got acquainted with his work,” the “Figaro literer” echoed him. Pasternak’s novel, Gustav Gerling noted in the West German Mercur, “can by no means be considered a completely successful work: it is populated by figures with a very poorly defined psychology, chaotic in construction.” The Dutch bourgeois newspaper saw nothing in Doctor Zhivago except "affection, literary clumsiness, strained symbolism and wasteful use of characters." “It seems to me,” the French critic Andre Rousseau admitted, “that Pasternak’s realism ... is very close to banality and even vulgar naturalism. Be that as it may, in this case you do not feel that irresistible force with which great works usually capture us ... ”. V. Nabokov called the novel Doctor Zhivago “painful, mediocre, false”, and Graham Greene called it “clumsy, crumbling like a deck of cards”.

Rare reasonable voices were muffled, however, by powerful pathetic rhetoric: “The stagnation of Soviet literature lasted ... until the appearance of Doctor Zhivago in 1958” (Guerney B. An Anthology of Russian Literature in the Soviet Period from Gorki to Pasternak. New York, 1960. P. XXII); “the novel stands in brilliant solitude”, “a bestseller in Europe”, “the voice of another Russia” (Slonim M. Russian Soviet Literature: Writers and Problems. New York, 1964. P. 228, 230); “Nobel Prize against Communism” (signature under the portrait of Pasternak in the Viennese newspaper Neue Courier in the issue on the eve of the announcement of the Nobel laureates), etc.

“We could partially imagine and understand the reaction of the Soviet public to Pasternak being awarded the Nobel Prize for the novel “Doctor Zhivago” (in 1958. - V.V.), - W. Vickery argued, - if they imagined our indignation and accusations of disloyalty that could flare up in the USA against some well-known American writer who wrote a book on an extremely sensitive topic, due to which it was refused to be printed in the USA , and the author sent the manuscript to the USSR, and then received the Lenin Prize for Literature...” (Vickery W. The Cult of Optimism: Political and Ideological Problems of Recent Soviet Literature. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1963. P. 93–94 ).

While in France in April 1959, Sholokhov was asked by a correspondent of the Parisian evening newspaper France-Soir about his opinion on the Pasternak case (meaning the exclusion of the author of Doctor Zhivago from the Writers' Union and his refusal of the Nobel Prize. - V.V.), “gave an all the more remarkable answer because several Soviet diplomats listened to him without finding any reaction”: “The collective leadership of the Union of Soviet Writers lost their cool. Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago should have been published in the Soviet Union instead of banned. It was necessary that Pasternak be defeated by his readers, instead of bringing him up for discussion. If we acted in this way, our readers, who are very demanding, would have already forgotten about it. As for me, I think that the work of Pasternak as a whole is devoid of any significance, except for his translations, which are brilliant. As for the book Doctor Zhivago, the manuscript of which I read in Moscow, it is a formless work, an amorphous mass that does not deserve the title of a novel.”

Without resorting to a political assessment of Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago, Sholokhov indirectly reproached the Swedish Academy for neglecting the artistic side of literature, which at one time, even at the dawn of the Nobel Prizes, claiming world recognition, was pointed out in a rather sharp form by the largest Swedish writer August Strindberg: “... let's get rid of the masters who do not understand art, undertaking to judge it. And if necessary, let's give up Nobel money, dynamite money, as they are called” (quoted from: Kozhinov V. Nobel myth // Diary of a writer, 1996, March-April, p. 8).

A few days before the official announcement of the next Nobel laureate in 1964, the French writer and philosopher Jean Paul Sartre sent a letter to the Swedish Academy in which he refused the prize and asked to award it to some other artist. When the Nobel Committee announced his name as a laureate, the writer, through the Swedish embassy in Paris, resolutely rejected such high recognition for the second time, motivating his refusal by a long vow not to receive any awards and not to associate himself with the Nobel Foundation and the committee, obliging him to profess certain political and public opinions and sympathies. “Under the current conditions,” Sartre said, “the Nobel Prize objectively looks like an award either to Western writers or to recalcitrants from the East. She, for example, did not crown Pablo Neruda, one of the greatest poets in America. There was never a serious talk about Louis Aragon, who, however, deserves it. It is worthy of regret that the prize was awarded to Pasternak before Sholokhov, and that the only Soviet work awarded the award is a book published abroad ... ”(Literaturnaya gazeta. 1964. October 24. P. 1).

Charles Snow and Pampela Hansford Johnson expressed support for Sholokhov's candidacy for the award. “We are convinced,” they wrote, “that Sholokhov's works are of great and enduring value. This is how we think and ask the Nobel Committee to address precisely this aspect of the problem. It is clear that the novel as an art form is now constantly debated, and there is no consensus on how the novel should develop in the future.<···>In our opinion ... Sholokhov created a novel that is the best of its kind for a whole generation. This is Quiet Don. Other works by Sholokhov may not be on the same level, but The Quiet Flows the Don is a realistic epic worthy of War and Peace. If not as great as "War and Peace", insofar as it does not have that work of self-consciousness, but worthy of comparison with "War and Peace". And this work is much more tragic than War and Peace. It is significant that the most significant and most recognized work of Soviet literature depicts the sad death of the main characters, with the exception of a child, whose life flickers like a flame of hope. It is worth comparing the endings of "War and Peace" and "Quiet Flows the Don". In one case, the family happiness of Pierre and Natasha, in the other - Grigory Melekhov, persecuted, on the verge of death, who came, perhaps, for the last time to see his son ”(Archive of IMLI RAS, f. 520, op. 1, No. 62 ).

Charles Snow, on the other hand, suggested that the Institute of World Literature, represented by its director, his longtime friend I.I. Anisimov to present Sholokhov for the Nobel Prize and prepare materials about the writer (biography, bibliography, rationale). “Each of the awards,” writes D. Urnov, “is motivated by a special wording. Not for individual works, but for some exceptional feature of the whole work, the Nobel Prize is awarded. So, Kipling received for "masculinity of style." Hemingway - "for the influence of stylistic skill." Sholokhov's wording developed by itself: "Uncompromising truthfulness."

Do you think it's them (Nobel Committee. - V.V.) will pass? - asked Ivan Ivanovich (Anisimov. - V.V.), looking through and signing the relevant papers” (Bolshoi Ivan: A Book about I.I. Anisimov. M.: Pravda, 1982 (Spark Library, No. 22). P. 41).

Sholokhov was awarded the Nobel Prize, as indicated in the diploma of the laureate, “in recognition of the artistic strength and honesty that he showed in his Don epic about the historical phases of the life of the Russian people”.

In the summer of 1965, in order to clarify the attitude of Soviet writers to the fact (if any) of awarding the Sholokhov Prize to Moscow, the Vice President of the Nobel Committee visited Moscow. “Recently in Moscow,” Sholokhov wrote to L.I., First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee. Brezhnev on July 30, 1965 - was the vice-president of the Nobel Committee.

In a conversation at the Writers' Union, he made it clear that this year the Nobel Committee would obviously discuss my candidacy.

After the refusal of Jean Paul Sartre (last year) to receive the Nobel Prize, citing the fact that the Nobel Committee is biased in its assessments and that it, this committee, in particular, should have long ago awarded the Nobel Prize to Sholokhov, the visit of the Vice President cannot be regarded otherwise, like intelligence.

Just in case, I would like to know how the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU will react if this prize is (contrary to the class convictions of the Swedish committee) awarded to me, and what will my Central Committee advise me?<···>At the end of August I will go to Kazakhstan for 2-3 months, and I would be glad to have news before I leave.” The letter contains the opinion of the department of culture of the Central Committee of the CPSU: “... awarding the Nobel Prize in Literature to comrade. Sholokhov M.A. it would be a fair recognition on the part of the Nobel Committee of world significance for the work of an outstanding Soviet writer. In this regard, the department sees no reason to refuse the award if it is awarded.” Here is the resolution-conclusion: “To agree with the proposals of the department. P.Demichev, A.Shelepin, D.Ustinov, N.Podgorny, Yu.Andropov” - and reference: “Comrade. Sholokhov M.A. reported 16.VIII.65. G. Kunitsyn”.

The Nobel Prize for Mikhail Sholokhov in 1965 is one of the most discussed decisions of the Swedish Academy. Almost immediately after the announcement of the laureate, academicians were accused of acting in accordance with the political situation, but data from the archives of the Swedish Academy suggests otherwise. Meduza editor Alexander Polivanov visited the Swedish Academy, looked through the newly opened archive of the 1965 Nobel Prize, and came to the conclusion that the Nobel Committee could hardly have awarded the prize to anyone other than Sholokhov, even on simple procedural grounds.

Mikhail Sholokhov reading the Nobel speech, 1965. Photo: Sinitsyn / Sputnik / Scanpix

“[The Nobel Prize was awarded] to the one who wrote the best Russian historical novel after War and Peace […] and the best love story after Anna Karenina; who best described folk life after Gorky and the one who now occupies a place among the world classics, ”wrote Swedish academic Karl Ragnar Gierov in a column for Svenska Dagbladet immediately after the Nobel laureates for 1965 were announced. Not everyone agreed with him. “The Swedish Academy is parodying itself. […] How could this happen: the novel “Quiet Flows the Don” was written 25 years ago, and the Nobel Prize is awarded for it! […] Sholokhov wrote The Quiet Flows the Don at the age of 35. Günther Grass, if you take a modern author, is now 38. Naturally, he will not receive the Nobel Prize now, because he is too young. But in 1985, in 1990 - if guided by the Academy's method - he will receive, even if he does not write a single line in 25 years, ”journalist Bo Strömstedt quipped in Expressen (Grass received the Nobel Prize in 1999).

“The Swedish Academy awarded the Nobel Prize to Sholokhov for political rather than literary reasons. With the same success, the award could simply be issued by the Central Committee of the CPSU, ”said journalist Olof Lagerkrantz in the Dagens Nyheter newspaper. Who turned out to be right? The names of those discussed by Swedish academics for the Nobel Prize in Literature have been kept secret for 50 years, and for good reason: getting or not being shortlisted can greatly affect the reputation of writers. And in general, it is better to find out about some of the tricks of the authors, which they use to get into the number of laureates, after their death. “Joseph told me that he and Milos, who received the prize in 1980, nominated each other for it every year,” writes his publisher and close friend Ellendea Proffer in his recently published memoirs about Joseph Brodsky.

In 2016, the Swedish Academy, without waiting for requests from journalists, published a list of nominees for the 1965 award on its website. It contains 90 names, including very interesting ones. However, the most curious thing - the motivations of the academicians, why this or that writer is worthy of the Nobel Prize - remained in the archive in an undigitized form. In the meantime, this is a unique read for fans of "writer ratings". Here, for example, is the candidacy of the Italian Alberto Moravia - his Swedish academicians discussed quite carefully, but they scolded him for "erotomania" and, as a result, were not included in the shortlist. And here is another Italian - Giovanni Guareschi; academicians considered his work not corresponding to the "high requirements of art." Some writers remain longlisted because academics simply don't have translations by which to judge a candidate's worth.

Finally, there are those whose work has been analyzed in detail in previous years, and academics have decided that it does not deserve the Nobel Prize. Among such writers in 1965 were Friedrich Dürrenmat, Max Frisch, Somerset Maugham and Vladimir Nabokov. The latter was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1964. Then the Nobel Committee in its internal documents called "Lolita" "an immoral novel", which "can hardly be considered from the point of view of awarding the Nobel Prize." In 1965, academicians even dedicated a couple of words to Nabokov - "refused earlier." Most likely, this formulation migrated from report to report until 1977, when Nabokov died. In addition to the authors of Lolita and The Quiet Flows the Don, Russian-language literature on the long list of the Nobel Prize for 1965 was represented by Anna Akhmatova and Konstantin Paustovsky. Both writers were among the potential laureates for the first time, but if Paustovsky was eliminated at the stage of a long list (although academicians compared his "Tale of Life" with Gorky's legacy), then Akhmatova "reached the final."

Moreover, the academicians discussed the paradoxical idea of ​​sharing the prize between Anna Akhmatova and Mikhail Sholokhov. Apparently, they were stopped by the words of Professor Anders Esterling, long-term executive secretary of the Academy: “Awarding the prize to Anna Akhmatova and Mikhail Sholokhov can be explained by the fact that they write in the same language; they have nothing else in common." At the same time, Esterling emphasizes that Akhmatova can claim the prize alone. According to him, which are recorded in the report, Esterling read Akhmatova in translations and was struck by the "genuine inspiration" of her poetry. It is possible that her candidacy would have been considered later, but in 1966 Akhmatova died. According to the rules of the Swedish Academy, the Nobel Prize can only be awarded to living writers.

Excluding Anna Akhmatova, the Academy's shortlist in 1965 included Shmuel Josef Agnon and Nelly Sachs (shared the 1966 Nobel Prize), Miguel Asturias (1967 Nobel laureate), and Wystan Hugh Auden and Jorge Luis Borges (never won the Nobel Prize). The main contender for the award in 1965 was Sholokhov. And that's why. Until 1965, Mikhail Sholokhov was nominated for the award 12 times: in 1947-1950, in 1955-1956, in 1958, and also in 1961-1965. This alone indicates that academicians carefully considered the candidacy of the Soviet writer, but not only that. Suffice it to say that in 1948 it was put forward by the Nobel Committee itself, and a year before that, by order of the Swedish Academy, literary critic Anton Karlgren wrote a 136-page (!) Report on the author of The Quiet Flows the Don - it is still kept in the Sholokhov file » in the Nobel Archives.

From the mid-1950s, the Soviet government joined the fight for the prize for Sholokhov (before that, the Union of Writers and the Academy of Sciences of the USSR did not put forward their candidates for the "Western" prize). It is known that Soviet officials perceived Sholokhov as an alternative to Boris Pasternak and did their best to convince academicians that it was Sholokhov who should receive the “Soviet” Nobel Prize. The awarding of the Pasternak Prize in 1958 was perceived in the USSR almost as a defeat in foreign policy. In the 1960s, Sholokhov was nominated for the Nobel Prize not only by Soviet organizations. For example, in 1965 applications came from the USSR Academy of Sciences and the Gorky Institute of World Literature, but also from the universities of Lyon and London. And if the Soviet applications looked, among other things, somewhat comical (the USSR Academy of Sciences, justifying its choice, wrote that Sholokhov visited “many countries during his career: Poland, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, France, England and the USA” - as if forgetting that for the Western reader there is no merit in the very fact of traveling), the papers from others turned out to be quite academic.

Certainly influenced the decision of the Swedish Academy and Nobel Laureate 1964 - Jean-Paul Sartre. As you know, he refused the prize, including due to the fact that the Nobel Committee ignores Soviet literature and Sholokhov in particular. Sartre did not know that in 1964 the names of the authors of "Nausea" and "The Quiet Flows the Don" were not only together on the short list of the Nobel Academy, but also went right next to each other. Already in 1964, Sholokhov was considered the main contender for the prize after Sartre - and it is logical that in 1965 he became the favorite. Sholokhov's works were well known to academicians. The Quiet Flows the Don was translated into Swedish many years ago (and, say, Doctor Zhivago was published in Swedish after Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize). It is characteristic that academicians in 1964 ordered another study of Sholokhov's work - it did not concern general information about the writer, but a very specific thing - the differences in the editions of The Quiet Flows the Don. This proves that they were well aware of Sholokhov (the study was carried out by Nils-Oke Nilsson, the same scientist who informed Pasternak in 1958 that his candidacy was being considered by academicians).

In fact, the Swedish Academy had only one reason not to give the prize to Sholokhov - that he had not written anything new for a long time. For the committee, this is a serious argument - several candidates from the long list did not make it to the short list precisely because they did not create new works. For example, it was precisely this that academicians in 1965 motivated the refusal to consider the candidacy of Andre Malraux. The seriousness of this problem is also evidenced by the fact that Esterling mentions it in the report on the decision of the Academicians, insisting, however, that The Quiet Flows the Don does not lose its relevance. In part, the Swedish Academy in the relevance of the author of "The Quiet Flows the Don" had to be convinced by applications from the USSR. They emphasize that Sholokhov is precisely contemporary writer- in 1956, he completed The Fate of Man, in 1959 - Virgin Soil Upturned, in 1960 - received the Lenin Prize. “Mikhail Sholokhov takes an active part in the social and political life our country,” write Soviet academicians, trying to update the name of Sholokhov in the eyes of the Swedes.

Apparently, they succeeded: the Nobel laureate of 1965 was chosen unanimously. “I would like my books to help people become better, become purer in soul, awaken love for man, the desire to actively fight for the ideals of humanism and the progress of mankind, ”said Mikhail Sholokhov in his Nobel speech. Alas, just a few months later, the Nobel laureate began to say completely different things: at the XXIII Congress of the CPSU, held in the spring of 1966, he regretted that it was not the 1920s now, and writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel could not be shot. Sholokhov preferred solidarity with the party to the "ideals of humanism". How academics in Sweden reacted to this is unknown, but five years later they awarded the Nobel Prize to another Soviet writer, Alexander Solzhenitsyn. It is known for certain that before 1965 Solzhenitsyn was not among the nominees for the award, which means that the decision of 1970 was largely spontaneous. How exactly it was accepted will become clear in January 2021, when the Swedish Academy will open the archive for 1970.