Who wrote the quiet don. Who actually wrote "Quiet Don" Arguments for and against

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Dedicated to my wife Faina Kolodnaya, who helped secretly photocopy the manuscripts of “The Quiet Don”

The book is preceded by an article by Emeritus Professor of the University of Wales Brian Murphy, a famous Sholokhov scholar and translator of the novel into English. It came out after the first articles in the Moscow media about the found manuscripts in the scientific journal New Zealand Slavonic Journal, dedicated to Slavic philology in 1992. And it was the first response of the specialist.

Brian Murphy was the first to publish a review of the book in 1996 in the English journal Slavonic and East European Review, specializing in Slavic and East European philology. He refers to Lev Kolodny’s publications in the media, which gave him reason to consider the problem of the authorship of “Quiet Don” to be resolved.

"Quiet Don" - the end of the myth

In Moscow, L. E. Kolodny seems to have finally put an end to the constant statements that Nobel Prize winner Sholokhov is a plagiarist.

Mikhail Sholokhov was born in 1905 and published two collections of short stories in 1925 and 1926. At the end of 1925, Sholokhov began working on his masterpiece, the novel Quiet Don. The first two books of the novel appeared in 1928 and caused a sensation. The work gave a complete picture of the life of the Cossacks before the First World War and traced the fate of the most loyal elements of the tsarist army. The work ended with a tragic clash between whites and reds on the Don.

Almost at the same time, some representatives of the Moscow intelligentsia asked the question: could such work come from the pen of a young man whose school education was interrupted by the revolution at the age of 13? Rumors of plagiarism began to spread. A specially appointed commission examined the essence of the issue. The commission was headed by veteran Soviet literature writer A. Serafimovich. The commission members looked at the manuscript that Sholokhov brought to Moscow - about a thousand pages written in his hand. To their satisfaction, they stated that there was no reason to accuse the author of plagiarism.

The third book of “Quiet Don” encountered great difficulties when it appeared in print. This part of the novel talks mainly about the Cossack uprisings against Soviet power in 1919. The young Cossacks were not essentially pro-white, but they took up arms in the face of unprecedented repression that the Bolsheviks brought upon their villages, raping women and passing countless sentences on innocent victims.

At that most critical moment of the civil war, the communist advance to the south was stopped. Thirty thousand of Russia's finest Cossack soldiers took up arms to hold back the Red Army's advance toward the Don, an important region. Sholokhov experienced all these events himself as a child. In the twenties, he communicated a lot with former rebels, especially with one of the leaders of the Cossack uprising against Soviet power, Kharlampy Ermakov, who became the prototype for the main character of the work, Grigory Melekhov.

Sholokhov showed the excesses of Soviet politics in the novel and was forced to fight with conservative editors for the right to publish what he wrote. In 1929, he continued publishing the novel in the ultra-Orthodox magazine October. But this publication was suspended after the appearance of the 12th chapter. E. G. Levitskaya, a friend of Sholokhov, convinced Stalin not to make cuts in the novel, which the editors insisted on (M. Gorky and M. Sholokhov himself convinced Stalin of this. - Note ed.). Apparently, Stalin heeded her arguments. And thanks to Stalin’s consent, the end of the third book was published in the magazine in 1932. The third book was published the following year.

Kolodny recently showed that the reason for the delay in publication, which befell the fourth book, was mainly the opinion of Stalin’s circle that Melekhov, in accordance with the laws of socialist realism, should have become a communist. Sholokhov did not give up his point of view, saying that this was a falsification of the philosophy of his main character.

The chapters of the last, fourth book of the novel began to be published in 1937. Quiet Don was not published in its entirety until 1940.

Sholokhov lived in a small town in the central part of the Don. In fairness, it must be said that in the 30s the writer repeatedly risked his life, during the years of repression, protecting local leaders from an unfair trial. But in the post-war years, he began to enjoy notoriety for attacks on dissident writers, in particular Sinyavsky and Daniel, who ended up in the dock. Because of this, Sholokhov was rejected by most of the Russian public. Old accusations of plagiarism were renewed in 1974 in connection with the publication in Paris of an anonymous monograph entitled “The Stirrup of the Quiet Don.” It put forward the point of view that the work was mainly written by a white Cossack officer, writer Fyodor Kryukov. A. Solzhenitsyn wrote the preface to this book he published. The cloud of accusations began to grow again due to the support of this point of view by other writers, in particular Roy Medvedev. The authorship of Kryukov, however, was rejected by Geir Hetso, who computer-searched “Quiet Don” and unequivocally established that the creator of the entire work was Sholokhov. The potential scandal, however, looked too attractive to leave alone. And to this day, some researchers are practicing alternative theories; one of them, for example, was promoted for a long time on Leningrad television.

Kolodny gave a decisive rebuff to this kind of speculation, inflicting, as the French say, a “coup de grace,” that is, the executioner’s final blow, depriving the condemned man of life, by publishing several original manuscripts of Mikhail Sholokhov. Kolodny made public the fact that 646 pages of unknown early manuscripts are in one of the private archives. On some pages there are dates marked in Sholokhov’s hand, starting with “autumn 1925.” In March 1927, the author calculated that the first part by that time contained 140 thousand printed characters, which amounted to an average of three printed sheets of text. The drafts are of exceptional interest not only because they prove Sholokhov’s authorship, but also because they shed light on the implementation of his plans and the technology of creativity. The author originally intended to describe the execution of the Bolsheviks Podtelkov and Krivoshlykov in 1919. But in order to give readers an idea of who the Cossacks were, he considered it necessary to begin the story with the events of 1912, to show life as it was during the previous regime.

Sholokhov made a large number of corrections in the text, replacing not only individual words and phrases, but also rewriting entire chapters.

Initially, the first book began with the departure of Pyotr Melekhov for military training in the camp. Thanks to the manuscripts, it is clear that the writer then decided to begin the chronicle with a description of the murder of the Turkish grandmother Grigory Melekhov by the Cossacks. In the early manuscript, the author left the surname of the prototype Ermakov for the main character, although he changed his name Kharlampiy to Abram. After Abram Ermakov killed the first German soldier, he felt disgusted with the war. This scene did not remain in the novel, but finds a parallel in the final text of “Quiet Don”, in the first book, third part, chapter V, where Gregory chops down an Austrian soldier with a saber.

On February 4, 1992, Moskovskaya Pravda published the unknown 24th chapter of Quiet Don, which describes Gregory’s first wedding night. This scene contrasts sharply with his previous love affairs, especially with a Cossack woman whom he raped. She was a virgin. Surprisingly, the author himself removed this scene, since it diverged from the general line of the work, where Gregory appears noble, in contrast to the atrocious colleagues around him.

Today, when accusations of plagiarism have been reliably stopped, we can hope that it will be possible to publish early versions of The Quiet Flows the Don.

Kolodny L. Here it is, the manuscript of “The Quiet Don” (with the conclusion of a forensic expert, handwriting expert Yu. N. Pogibko) // Moskovskaya Pravda, May 25, 1991.

Kolodny L. Manuscripts of “The Quiet Don” // Moscow. No. 10. 1991

Kolodny L. Manuscripts of "The Quiet Don". With Sholokhov’s autograph // Rabochaya Gazeta, October 4, 1991.

Kolodny L. Who will publish my “Quiet Don”? // Book Review, 1991, No. 12.

Kolodny L. Unknown “Quiet Don” (with the publication of the first, early version of “Quiet Don”, part 1, chapter 24) // Moskovskaya Pravda, February 4, 1992.

Manuscripts of “The Quiet Don” // Questions of Literature, No. 1, 1993.

Black drafts // Questions of literature, No. 6., 1994.

Brian Murphy, professor (England)

Preface to the first edition of 1995

In it, the author explains what his motives were when he decided to enter into polemics with works published by such authors as Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Roy Medvedev, who dispute the authorship of Mikhail Sholokhov in relation to the novel “Quiet Don.”

I started working on this book when the author of “Quiet Don” was alive. At that time, monographs where his authorship was disputed were published far from Moscow. One of them - under the pseudonym D * - was published through the efforts of A. I. Solzhenitsyn under the title “The Stirrup of the Quiet Don.” Another book was written by Roy Medvedev, who did not hide his authorship, in the past - a dissident, then a people's deputy of the USSR, a member of the CPSU Central Committee, a famous publicist and historian. Book D* was published in Russian in Paris, Roy Medvedev’s book was published in English and French in London and Paris.

I am finishing my work when both of these monographs ceased to be a sealed secret for the Russian reader, who had long heard about them: as a result, strong doubts were sown in his mind regarding the authorship of Mikhail Sholokhov. In the writer’s homeland, Don, an article by a Rostov associate professor appeared, where an attempt was made to throw Sholokhov off his pedestal. A metropolitan magazine published a chapter from an old book by Roy Medvedev, who states that “Quiet Don” has not one, but two authors... Nikita Struve, director of the Imka-Press publishing house, which once published “The Stirrup of the Quiet Don”, in a Moscow newspaper recommends the book to our reader...

In the winter and spring of 1990, before the eyes of millions of people on television screens, the popular “Fifth Wheel” rolled over the bones of the late writer, claiming that he had committed plagiarism. Those who rolled this wheel tried to prove that the author of the novel was Fyodor Kryukov, who died in early 1920, a forgotten Russian writer, a native of the Don.

How can one refute assumptions, hypotheses, versions developed by such authoritative people as A.I. Solzhenitsyn, R.A. Medvedev, anonymous literary critic D* and other literary critics who have now appeared in different cities of the country, and after them producers of sensations for TV? Only documents and manuscripts of Mikhail Sholokhov, some of which are kept in the Pushkin House.

But there is not a single page of the manuscripts of the first and second volumes of the novel. Namely, the first two volumes of “Quiet Don”, published in 1928, gave rise to doubts regarding the authorship.

There seems to be a logical explanation for such a strange circumstance at first glance, when half of the novel has been partially preserved and half has not. After all, the writer’s house on the Don came under fire when the village of Veshenskaya found itself on the front line in 1942. Then, on the threshold of the house, the writer’s mother was killed during a raid. At the same hours, sheets of manuscripts, covered with Sholokhov’s handwriting, flew across the village. The soldiers used them for smoking. There are eyewitnesses to that long-ago disaster. Some of the sheets were collected and preserved by people who returned them to the author after the war.

It would seem that such a tragedy, when a mother’s blood drips onto white sheets, when manuscripts perish in the hours of national tragedy, could cool the ardor of refuted people, find compassion in the hearts of people, and arouse anger against those who, without any particular reason, express doubts about authorship...

When I started my work, I set two goals – minimum and maximum. The first one was like a win-win lottery for me. I had to follow in the footsteps of the writer in a space that was well known to me, around Moscow, and write a local history work under the code name “Around Sholokhov’s Moscow.” This minimum included a search for Sholokhov’s addresses, his acquaintances and friends who could remember something about him.

The second task was to find, with luck, some clear evidence of Sholokhov's authorship during this search. I reasoned like this: if, suppose, a literary crime was committed, then, as with any crime, there should be at least some traces of it, evidence - either indirect or direct, as criminologists say, material evidence. That is, manuscripts.

I was outraged that this problem could be freely spoken and written only abroad. Why are they silent in the writer’s homeland? Why are they burying the memory of Fyodor Kryukov, whom Maxim Gorky set as an example for young Soviet writers and encouraged him to learn knowledge of his native land? If the version of plagiarism is slander, then it must be demonstrably exposed. If this is not done, then it will only grow, like a snowball rolling down a mountain. And it will rise so that it will darken the light of truth.

I did not want to submit to the dictates of the literary bosses who had climbed to the top of power, who did not allow the name of Mayakovsky’s beloved to be mentioned in print, the names of the prohibited works of Bulgakov, Platonov, Akhmatova, Grossman, which were published freely in the West, where “The Stirrup of the Quiet Don” appeared in 1974. . Action gives rise to reaction. This book is one of them.

What else inspired me? A well-known idea: manuscripts don’t burn. Although all my life I have been convinced of the opposite. I saw manuscripts burning, which were burned in courtyards under the supervision of janitors, who in the summer of 1941 were entrusted with destroying the archives of institutions before the surrender of my hometown on the Dnieper.

Manuscripts were also burned in Moscow in October 1941, when German tanks were about to break through to Sokol, and from there along the highway to the Kremlin. But they didn’t burn everything then, everything didn’t burn then. That's why I'm writing this book.

So, let’s follow in the footsteps of the “Quiet Don”, in the footsteps of Mikhail Sholokhov, left in a small space in the center of the capital.

Preface to the second edition of 2000

Five years have passed since the first edition of the book, where I told how the manuscripts of “The Quiet Don” were found and analyzed them. It would seem that the period is sufficient for the issue of the so-called “plagiarism” of the novel to be closed. But so many myths, legends, fictions, pseudoscientific monographs, articles have been written, and the inertia of the machine launched by Alexander Solzhenitsyn is so strong that a stream of lies continues to pour on the head of the late author.

Thus, a voluminous, 500-page collection, “Riddles and Secrets of the Quiet Don,” was published in Samara, composed of works by six authors. Chief among them is Alexander Solzhenitsyn, represented by “The Untorn Secret” - the preface to the book by I. N. Medvedeva-Tomashevskaya “The Stirrup of the Quiet Don”, a chapter from Alexander Isaevich’s book “A Calf Butted an Oak Tree” and his article published abroad “ According to the Don analysis." All three works are permeated with one obsessive thought of our classic, that Mikhail Sholokhov could not have been the author of a brilliant novel.

The collection includes the unfinished work of I. N. Medvedeva-Tomashevskaya, published in full in Paris in 1974 through the efforts of the same Alexander Solzhenitsyn. And more recent publications - the authors of L.3. Aksenova (Sova) and E.V. Vertel is refuted by a computer study by Scandinavian scientists who proved the authorship of Mikhail Sholokhov. A message from Israeli philologist Zeev Bar Sella, a former compatriot, has been published, shelling the “Quiet Don” from the hills of Jerusalem. Three hundred pages of the collection are occupied by the monograph by A. G. Makarov and S. E. Makarova “To the Origins of the Quiet Don.”

A laudatory review of the collection published by Moscow News concludes:

“The question of who is the author of “Quiet Don” - Sholokhov or, for example, Kryukov, seems incorrect to the Makarovs. Revealing different layers, different levels of editing, they prove that the textbook well-known text had several different authors - an author, a co-author, several editors: one of them was Mikhail Sholokhov. It is no coincidence that his draft of “The Quiet Don” did not survive, and, according to the future laureate of the Lenin, Nobel and other prizes, he died in 1942 during the shelling of the village of Veshenskaya.

The question – whether the name of another or other authors of “Quiet Don” will ever be named – thus remains open. As, indeed, the other: is there really no truth on earth, and is there no truth above?”

Naturally, there was no place in this collection for at least one chapter of my book. It is not only the media that does not receive attention. The Institute of World Literature, headed by director Felix Kuznetsov, a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, ignored the opening. My book lay on his desk for a year, not a single researcher gave a review about it, only the head of the Sholokhov Commission, Doctor of Philology V.V. Petelin published a few lines about the book in the newspaper... “Rural Life”!

Thousands of pages are filled with versions that prove that “The Quiet Don” has several authors, editors and co-authors, and that the true creator is given a secondary role. All these inventions were fueled by the myth that there are no drafts in nature; they were almost destroyed by Mikhail Sholokhov himself in order to conceal the name of the true author. But they exist! And they belong to Mikhail Sholokhov. Nowhere and never did he say that the draft of “Quiet Don” was lost during an artillery shelling of the village. The writer knew well where and who kept the manuscripts of the first two books in Moscow, which I found at the end of 1983 in the family of the writer’s friend who died at the front.

When I first reported this in Moskovskaya Pravda in 1990, I could not say specifically who exactly had the manuscript of “Quiet Don”. The family where the priceless archive was kept bound me with a word not to disclose their names and addresses for fear that the proliferating hunters for precious manuscripts would be on the trail of defenseless women.

In 1997, a mother and daughter died who kept Mikhail Sholokhov’s archive in a Moscow apartment. It passed into the hands of the heirs. No longer bound by words, I can not only name the names of the deceased owners of the manuscript, but also publish in facsimile a part of the Moscow Sholokhov archive.

With great difficulty I managed to photocopy the manuscripts of “Quiet Don”. I donated two chapters of the 1925 novel in photocopies to the Institute of World Literature in 1995, at a meeting at the institute dedicated to Sholokhov’s 90th anniversary. I copied the entire draft of the first part of Quiet Flows the Flow the Don, 85 pages, as well as the opening pages of the second and third versions of the first part, the first pages of the second, third and fourth parts, forming two books of the novel. They are in this book. I am publishing ten pages of “black drafts” and two pages numbered 111 and 112, where traces of significant authorial editing are visible.

The book included for the first time a chapter describing the meeting in 1930 in the village of Sholokhov and the prosecutor of the Kursk region L.A. Sidorenko, who conducted a private investigation into the problem of authorship. Then versions of plagiarism multiplied.

For the first time, I am publishing in a book the conclusion of the Institute of Forensic Expertise of the USSR Ministry of Justice, which in 1989, on my initiative, conducted a graphological analysis of the manuscript of “The Quiet Don.” I donated the original document to the M. A. Sholokhov Museum. The book contains photographs, documents that give an idea of how the manuscript was found, as well as letters from Professor German Ermolaev from Princeton University and Professor Brian Murphy, translator of “The Quiet Don” in England, addressed to me. They found the words to recognize my priority before the IMLI philologists.

The second edition, like the first, became possible thanks to P.F. Aleshkin, head of the Golos publishing house. V. I. Resin, the first deputy mayor of Moscow in the city government, helped.

I would like to especially thank the family of Margarita Konstantinovna Kleimenova, the widow of Hero of the Soviet Union Ivan Kleimenov, friend Mikhail Sholokhov, and his daughter Larisa Ivanovna Kleimenova. The family made available to me the archives described in detail in this book.

I belong to those who are convinced that truth must be sought not in heaven, but on earth. The history of the drafts of “Quiet Don” confirms another truth - manuscripts do not burn. They are found sooner or later.

So who wrote the epoch-making novel? The significance of this work even goes beyond the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was awarded to this only literary work in the genre of “socialist realism”.
Here is what the famous literary critic S. Semanov wrote:
"Quiet Don" is an amazing phenomenon in world literature. We are convinced that nothing like this has been created since the time of the Iliad (even though our opinion is controversial, many will agree).”
This, we repeat, is not an enthusiastic judgment of a literature lover, but an assessment of a specialist in the field of literary criticism, that is, an objective (as far as objectivity is possible for the humanities) science about literature, its history, criteria for evaluating and analyzing works, etc.
To put it in modern slang - a “not weak” comparison! - Since the time of the Iliad - nothing like it!
Even if this assessment seems exaggerated to some, it is, apparently, not without well-known grounds.
Even if we ignore such strong judgments, the facts speak for themselves: the novel has been translated into a lot of foreign languages, and one of the earliest translations was into English. The Russian emigration in the 30s read the novel, vigorously discussing it (this does not look like “socialist realism,” however!). In 1965, the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to M.A. Sholokhov for the novel “Quiet Don” with the wording: “For the artistic strength and integrity of the epic about the Don Cossacks at a turning point for Russia.”
Three film adaptations throughout the 20th century: 1930, 1958, 1992. And it seems that there is talk of a new film adaptation already in the 21st century, and this is natural: great works are filmed many times, then film experts and film fans argue about the merits and demerits of each version.
A general comparison in terms of the level and significance of “Quiet Don” is only with “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy.
A discussion of the artistic merits of this, according to the Nobel committee, epic in scope work about Russia at a turning point for it, is beyond the scope of our article. There is an extensive literary literature on this topic: articles, monographs, reading a number of which will enrich anyone with the ability to read great literature.
We will try to understand the mystery that has literally been around since the publication of the first part of the novel in the late 20s. 20th century - haunts many, many, in the USSR, in emigration, in foreign circles of readers and researchers, in today's Russia. This mystery of the century has not been resolved to this day. Who wrote "Quiet Don"? - thousands of readers and researchers ask themselves again and again. There are a host of them, and they are using a variety of and increasingly sophisticated methods, including the latest technologies for computer text analysis, in an attempt to establish true authorship. This very story of suspicions of plagiarism and attempts to resolve the mystery is full of the most dramatic and fascinating collisions, worthy of description in a separate book: the history of attempts to establish the true authorship of “The Quiet Don.”
But what did Mikhail Sholokhov himself, as the only official author of the novel, “dislike”? What is he suspected of? No matter how funny and sad it may seem: in excessive youth. A twenty-year-old man could not create such a grandiose canvas of the era. After all, even the geniuses of literature in such early years created, at best, poetic masterpieces, romantic stories, love stories. Vivid works breathing youth, freshness of feelings, but not life experience, subtle psychologism in the recreation of human characters, and, finally, possession of an array of special information , in abundance, scattered in this socio-psychological chronicle novel. Of course, with a certain erudition, it is not difficult to cite examples when almost equally young authors created prose works of similar scope.
The novels “A Hero of Our Time” by Mikhail Lermontov and “Buddenbrooks” by Thomas Mann (also a Nobel novel). This is just an illustration of the idea; there are many more examples.
This is not an evidentiary criterion.
But there is a much more significant criterion that casts doubt on Sholokhov’s authorship: educational level. If you have great talent, you can create masterpieces even in your early youth, and there are many examples of this in history.
As well as the opposite: when old age did not dampen the creative power of writers, artists, composers, scientists.
But even the greatest talent will not be fully revealed - without appropriate preparedness, level of education, special skills, living environment - you never know what affects professional and creative formation and development!
Sergei Yesenin could come with his simple educational background, but with his natural talent as a poet, right to the threshold of the house he had found with difficulty, where Alexander Blok lived, and amaze the recognized classic with the originality of the talent of a “peasant poet.”
Could Mikhail Sholokhov, with his four-year education, short-lived work as a special correspondent, employment in Komsomol work - all this hardly left so much time for deep general and literary self-education, which could more than compensate for the lack of official received - create, and even as soon as possible, "Quiet Don"? An epic novel of the highest artistic level.
Maturity of the pen even for a great master.
An author demonstrating mastery of military archive materials.
Deep knowledge of the intricacies of inter-party and inter-factional battles and the context of the life of the State Duma of the early 20th century in Russia.
With traces in the text of the author’s personal participation in the events of the Civil War in the South, and on the side of the White Army?!
Neither Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov himself nor the party of his defenders and apologists gave any convincing answers to these naturally arising questions.
The subsequent fifty-year literary career of M.A. Sholokhov was crowned with all kinds of awards of official recognition, high positions in the literary and party spheres, the rank of the first classic of Soviet literature, studied in the school curriculum. Translations, reprints, film adaptations, adaptations of the plots of works into the language of drama and opera.
Only the main thing was missing: a work equal in level to “Quiet Don”. Even quantitatively, during his long literary life, in which no one would interfere with his publications and apologetics, Sholokhov wrote very few works.
In addition to the early, and by the author’s own admission, still very inept, although not devoid of charm, “Don Stories” (before “Quiet Don”) - the novel “Virgin Soil Upturned” is interesting, but according to literary scholars, cannot be compared with “ Quiet Don." The most piercing story “The Fate of Man.” The unfinished novel “They Fought for the Motherland.” A few more stories. That's probably all. No matter how you evaluate these works, which undoubtedly belonged to the pen of M.A. Sholokhov, they are far from “Quiet Don”. And Sholokhov himself, in his declining years, bitterly admitted in private conversations that he never managed to write anything at least partly equal in I think that it’s not only a matter of “fading talent”, but an extremely cloying praise from above and the lack of critics’ right to even a shadow of... actually, normal professional criticism, and among readers - a natural discord in judgments: an artist must create in much more severe conditions, so as not to reduce your level.
And yet: if Sholokhov is not the author, then who is?! And how did Sholokhov manage to appropriate the authorship of the great novel (if he copied it from someone)?
There is a long-standing and many times disputed and newly put forward version of the authorship: Fyodor Kryukov.
The most interesting thing, in our opinion, in this non-disputable version: is the presence of a much larger number of psychological points on which it is easier to agree with the version of Kryukov’s authorship than Sholokhov’s. Not evidence in itself, necessary and sufficient, but still...Today Fyodor Kryukov is already called a “forbidden classic”, ranking alongside Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Irina Medvedeva-Tomashevskaya conducted a meticulous long-term study in the 60s, and at considerable risk. Her monograph was subsequently published in 1974 in Paris - “The Stream of the Quiet Don” with a foreword by A. Solzhenitsyn. In it, she provides a rationale for the version of authorship in favor of Fyodor Dmitrievich Kryukov.
Let us briefly trace the biographical outline of this once famous Don writer: born February 2 (14), 1870. in the village of Glazunovskaya, Ust-Medveditsk district, land of the Don Army in the family of a Cossack ataman. A prosperous background made it possible to receive an excellent education: he graduated from the St. Petersburg Institute of History and Philology (literary education!). State Councilor in the table of ranks of the Russian Empire. Deputy of the First State Duma (remember the knowledge of the party-factional struggle in the novel, the details of the activities of the Russian Duma!). Head of the literature and art department of the magazine “Russian Wealth” - one of the best and most advanced literary magazines in pre-revolutionary Russia, published under the editorship of V.G. Korolenko, in which the best writers of Russia considered it prestigious to publish. One of the founders of the “People's Socialists” party. He taught Russian literature and history in gymnasiums in Orel and Nizhny Novgorod. Among his students was the poet Alexander Tenyakov.
And finally, during the Civil War he was a participant in the White Volunteer Movement. Secretary of the Military Circle. One of those who are called “ideologists of the White movement.” Isn’t this where the knowledge from the inside of the smallest details of everyday life and nuances that you have to go through yourself, and which Sholokhov could not know for sure, not even being in the Red Army, stunned many? Subsequently, Sholokhov himself tried to explain that this was supposed to be an artistic task: to write largely “from the whites,” to penetrate deeply into the inner world of the main character of the novel, Grigory Melekhov, torn by contradictions.
In 1920, retreating with the remnants of Denikin’s army to Novorossiysk, on the way F. Kryukov fell ill with typhus and soon died.
What happened to the field bag containing the manuscripts that Kryukov intended to publish abroad, in the white emigration? - There is an unproven version that the field bag with Kryukov’s manuscripts passed into the hands of a fellow White Guard soldier and also writer P. Ya Gromoslavsky. The latter was the father-in-law of Mikhail Sholokhov. The last fact is irrefutable, the others are at the level of rumors.
Is it possible to prove the authorship of Kryukov or Sholokhov objectively, using computer analysis of stylistic features, frequency of repetition of themes, motifs, even individual words and turns of speech, etc., etc. Yes, such work was carried out, and abroad.
"Quiet Don" is not an anonymous work. It was published by Mikhail Sholokhov, and accordingly he should be considered the sole author until the contrary is proven,” Norwegian authors G. Hjetso and others summarized the computer research in the monograph “Who wrote “Quiet Don”?” Personally, I, the author of these lines, read this work with an abundance of digital computer statistics on the comparison of texts by Kryukov and Sholokhov. A computer in the 80s, when the research was carried out, showed that the author was most likely Sholokhov.
Can a smart computer produce obvious absurdity? Should we believe an impassive machine when it is almost impossible to accept such a conclusion psychologically? Khyetso and others were later reproached for openly sympathizing with Sholokhov and, consequently, for tendentiousness and bias in constructing the calculation program.
However, the methodology is not so biased, and the computer that conducted the research using this program is not so lying. Enormous work on comparing the texts of Kryukov and Sholokhov, on analyzing the inconsistencies with each other in terms of stylistic features of parts of the novel, done by many other researchers, showed: there is a kind of amalgam, a mixture of the literary styles of both writers! It's not getting any easier hour by hour! In the end, the point of view began to be established (Marietta Chudakova and others) that the “basis” of the novel was based on Kryukov’s drafts, but the text was significantly supplemented, rewritten, revised, and in some places distorted by the hand of Sholokhov or those who corrected the original text for him.
This is not a reservation: there is an even more eccentric version that Sholokhov did not write any of the works attributed to him, but was a Nobel “project” of the KGB, and various other writers wrote for him. (Nowadays such shadow authors of successful “brands” are called "Negroes")
Nevertheless, to us this hypothesis: about the fact that Sholokhov “did not write anything at all from the works attributed to him” seems doubtful, to say the least. It is impossible to live your whole life in such a monstrous lie.
And “Quiet Don”...I believe it was the drama of Sholokhov’s entire life, when he was simply physically unable to reveal the whole truth about the creation of his greatest novel. And they wouldn’t have allowed it: in the 30s, the “Maria Ulyanova Commission” to investigate “false fabrications about plagiarism” threatened in the most unambiguous way in the press with reprisals for those who doubted the authorship of M. Sholokhov.
He simply no longer belonged to himself.
There are other versions, and more...But still unproven.
S. Semanov, mentioned at the beginning of our article, wrote that in the history of literature there are cases of anonymity and uncertainty at the level of strict evidence of the authorship of great works. Among others he called “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign.” So, it turns out that not only the thickness of centuries, but also modernity can leave unsolvable mysteries.
04/09/2011.

The main argument of supporters of Sholokhov’s sole authorship until 1999 was considered to be a rough autograph of a significant part of the text of “The Quiet Don” (more than a thousand pages), discovered in 1987 and stored at the Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Supporters of Sholokhov's authorship have always argued that this manuscript testifies to the author's careful work on the novel, and the previously unknown history of the text explains the errors and contradictions noted by their opponents in the novel. In addition, in the 1970s, the Norwegian Slavist and mathematician Geir Hjetso conducted a computer analysis of the indisputable texts of Sholokhov, on the one hand, and “Quiet Don”, on the other, and came to the conclusion about Sholokhov’s authorship.
In 1999, after many years of searching, the Institute of World Literature named after. A. M. Gorky RAS managed to find the manuscripts of the 1st and 2nd books of “Quiet Don” that were considered lost. This is the same manuscript around which speculation about “plagiarism” continued for decades. It was this manuscript that Sholokhov brought in 1929 to the commission, which was headed by M.I. Ulyanova and which then completely cleared the writer of charges of plagiarism. M. A. Sholokhov left this manuscript for safekeeping with his closest friend, the writer-villager Vasily Kudashov, who later died at the front. All this time, since 1941, the widow of V. Kudashov had the manuscript, but when Sholokhov scholars turned to her, she said that there was no manuscript - it was lost when moving. At the time of the most serious accusations of plagiarism against Sholokhov, she hid the fact of the existence of this manuscript. Only after her death, when all the property passed to the heirs, was it possible to find the manuscript and buy it with the personal assistance of the Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation V.V. Putin in allocating funds for this, which made it possible to conduct an examination regarding the authorship of “Quiet Don”. The manuscript contains 885 pages. Of these, 605 were written by the hand of M. A. Sholokhov, 280 pages were rewritten in white by the hand of the writer’s wife and her sisters; many of these pages also contain editing by M. A. Sholokhov. Pages written by M. A. Sholokhov include drafts, variants and white pages, as well as sketches and inserts to certain parts of the text. M. A. Sholokhov’s handwriting is clear, sharply individual and easily recognizable. Nevertheless, when acquiring the manuscript, three examinations were carried out: graphological, textological and identification, certifying the authenticity of the manuscript and its belonging to its time - the end of the 1920s. From the conclusion of textual critics it follows that: “1. There is no doubt that 605 pages of this manuscript were written by the hand of Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov. ... 4. This manuscript provides a wealth of material for analyzing the writer’s work on two books of the novel, allows us to penetrate into the creative laboratory of its author, and reconstruct the history of the creation of this work. 5. There is no doubt that the textual study of this manuscript ... makes it possible to solve the problem of the authorship of “Quiet Don” with scientific validity.”

Accusation of Mikhail Sholokhov
in plagiarism

Unique case

After the death of Maxim Gorky, Mikhail Sholokhov began to occupy an increasingly significant place in Soviet literature. His work is today the subject of discussion at serious scientific conferences, where he is compared with Tolstoy, calling him “the greatest author of our time” 1. In his homeland alone, his works went through about a thousand editions, and the total number of copies reached fifty million. The awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Sholokhov in 1965 for “Quiet Don” clearly demonstrated that his fame at home was accompanied by international recognition.

In the fall of 1974, on the eve of the writer’s seventieth birthday, a critical work entitled “The Stirrup of the Quiet Don” was published in Paris. Mysteries of the Novel,” which then belonged to the now deceased Soviet literary critic, whose name was hidden under the pseudonym D* 2. The preface to this book was written by Alexander Solzhenitsyn; he fully supported the conclusion that the author came to: “Quiet Don” is not a work by Sholokhov. Perhaps we are dealing with one of the most blatant cases of plagiarism in the history of literature?

Accusations of plagiarism or literary forgery appear quite often in the Soviet press. The target of such accusations may be a consultant who took advantage of his position to “borrow” the work of an ill or deceased writer, or an author who “discovered” the work and subsequently published it as his own 3 . And yet, the accusation brought against Sholokhov can be considered unique: this author is so much a source of national pride that to cast a shadow of doubt on the authenticity of his magnum opus 4, “The Iliad of Our Century,” 5 means to commit an act close to sacrilege. The history of Russian literature knows only one case when an almost equally serious problem of authorship arose. This refers to the hypothesis that the Russian national epic “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” does not date back to the 12th century, but is in fact a forgery of the 18th century. The charges brought against Sholokhov appear to be much more serious. For, as one Danish Slavist rightly noted, “in the end, it is much more worthy to write something yourself and pass it off as an ancient Russian work than to publish someone else’s book, passing it off as your own” 6 .

Be that as it may, not a single work of Soviet literature has caused as much speculation as Quiet Don. Immediately after the book began publication in 1928, controversy arose around it. Sholokhov was accused of sympathizing with the white movement and kulaks, 7 and fierce debates about the correct understanding of the image of the main character, the “hesitant” Grigory Melekhov, continue to this day.

It is natural that the form and content of any great work of literature are controversial. However, in the case of “Quiet Don”, even the authorship itself is constantly disputed. Who wrote "Quiet Don"? The simplest answer, of course, is Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov, and he, undoubtedly, should be considered the only possible one until another authorship is undeniably proven. But despite the fact that this is the answer that has been given for more than fifty years, rumors of plagiarism are louder today than ever before. Obviously, when this kind of assumption arises, it is not enough to simply repeat the traditional answer, no matter how correct it may seem. Rumors can only be quelled by presenting counter-evidence that is stronger than that on which the rumors are based. Or, if we formulate this idea more in accordance with the methodology of this study, truth can only be found by destroying lies.

At a conference in Cambridge in 1975, American professor R. W. Bailey noted that Quiet Don is one of the few truly interesting cases of disputed authorship. It is difficult to object to this. Here we are faced not with the question of correlating a more or less well-known text with a more or less forgotten author, but we are dealing with the problem of disputed authorship in relation to a masterpiece of world literature, translated into more than 80 languages and published in hundreds of editions around the world. According to many, in this case we are talking about the future fate of the work. Of course, if you believe the American proverb, “all fame is good.” However, it remains to be proven that this saying applies to world literature to the same extent as to the life of Hollywood. Even if the demand in America for Quiet Flows the Flow has now increased compared to previous years, 8 a scandal related to the authorship could have the most negative consequences. It is significant that many American students lost interest in the book “because Solzhenitsyn called it a fake” 9 . This is why it is so important to conduct a serious investigation into all the accusations of plagiarism that have been brought against the author of this work for more than fifty years.

Notes

1 See: Filippov V. Scientific conference: The work of M. A. Sholokhov and world literature. (In connection with the 70th anniversary of his birth) // Bulletin of Moscow State University. Ser. 10. Philology, 1975. T. 10. No. 6. P. 92; Bazylenko S. All-Union Scientific Conference: The Work of M. A. Sholokhov and World Literature // Philologist. Sciences, 1975. 6(90). P. 122.

2 D*. Stirrup "Quiet Don". Mysteries of the novel. Paris: YMCA-press, 1974.

3 See, for example, the accusations brought against Andrei Ivanov in Literaturnaya Gazeta of December 25, 1974.

4 The main work. ( Note lane)

5 Semanov S. “Quiet Don” - literature and history. M.: Sovremennik, 1977. P. 5.

6 Møller P. Hvem skrev egentlig “Stille flyder Don”? // Weekendavisen Berlingske Aften. 15 Nov., 1974.

7 The ideological accusations brought against Sholokhov can be found in the book: Yakimenko L. Creativity of M. A. Sholokhov. 2nd ed., revised. M.: Sov. writer, 1970. Ch. 1. See also: Ermolaev H. Mikhail Sholokov and His Art. New Jersey; Princeton University Press, 1982. The final chapter of this book deals with the issue of plagiarism.

8 Letter from E. Green, Vice President and Editor-in-Chief, Alfred Knopf, August 17, 1977.

9 Stewart D. Sholokhov: Plagiarist?: Unpublished paper presented at AATSEEL in New York, 1975. P. 32.