Who is the real author of "Quiet Don"? Is that Mikhail Sholohov?

[SlavaOn]

Who is the real author of "Quiet Don"? Is that Mikhail Sholohov?

In 1974 Solzhenitsyn wrote this article:
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/sholokhov-and-the-riddle-of-the-quiet-don/
I will paste its text at the end of my post, in case you would want to read it here, without jumping to another site...

And one of the recent videos (in Russian) on that topic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqh9bIumats

If you have never read that novel, you may think that it would not matter who is the author. Whoever it is - he (or she) - is dead long time ago and the answer would not change anything. Yet, this 90 years old controversy is still alive and many Russians (including myself) would like to know the truth.

SlavaOn

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Sholokhov and the riddle of ‘The Quiet Don’



ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN


The Quiet Don was published in four parts between 1928 and 1940. (The earlier sections were formerly better known in English as Quiet Flows The Don, the later ones as The Don Flows Home To The Sea.) It is one of the greatest of twentieth-century Russian novels, and when Mikhail Sholokhov was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1965, the Swedish Academy cited its “artistic force and integrity”. But ever since the end of the 1920s there have been rumours that Sholokhov was not the only, or even the main, author. These suspicions have recently received fresh support in the form of an unfinished manuscript by a Russian critic, no longer living, which was published last month in Paris by the YMCA Press under the title Stremya “Tikhovo Dona” (The Current of “The Quiet Don”), with an introductory essay by Alexander Solzhenitsyn which appears here in English for the first time.


From the time when it first began to appear in 1928 The Quiet Don has posed a whole series of riddles which have not been satisfactorily answered even today. The reading public found itself confronted with something unprecedented in the history of literature. A twenty-three-year-old beginner had created a work out of material which went far beyond his own experience of life and his level of education (four years at school). A young member of a grain-requisitioning detachment, who had later been employed as a labourer and then as a clerk in the office of a Krasnaya Presnya housing-block in Moscow, had published a book which could have been written only by someone closely acquainted with many sections of pre-Revolutionary society in the Don region, a hook whose most impressive quality was its deep insight into the way of life and the psychology of the characters it portrayed.

Although in terms of his origins and his personal record he himself was an “outsider”, a non-Cossack, the emotional force of the young author’s novel was directed against the influence of “outsiders” and its destructive effect on the traditional culture of the Don— a message which he was never to repeat in later life or in any public statement however, remaining faithful to this very day to the mentality of those who requisitioned produce from the peasantry by force and served in “special purpose” units. He described vividly and with apparent first-hand knowledge the World War, in which he had been far too young to take part (he was only ten or so at the time), and the Civil War, which was over by the time he was fifteen.

The critics commented at once that here was a novice who wrote as though he had a great deal of literary experience behind him, that he “possesses a rich stock of observation and is not sparing in the way he disposes of those riches” (Zhizn iskusava [The Life of Art], 1928. No 51—et al). The book revealed the kind of literary power which can normally be attained only after many attempts by a practised and gifted author—and yet the finest sections were those which came first. The first volume was begun in 1926 and delivered complete to the editors in 1927; the splendid second volume was finished only a year after that; the third volume was ready within even less than a year of the second, and it was only on account of the “proletarian” censorship that this astonishing output was held up. So what are we to conclude—that we are dealing with an incomparable genius? But neither the level of achievement nor the rate of production has been confirmed or repeated in the subsequent forty-five years of his career!

Too many miracles !—and even when the early volumes first appeared there were widespread rumours that the novel had not In fact been written by the author who had put his name to it, that Sholokhov bad found a complete manuscript (or, according to other version, a diary) belonging to a Cossack officer who had been killed, and had turned it to his own use. In Rostov-on-Don, where I then lived, this was talked of with such assurance among adults that it impressed itself clearly on my mind, although I was only a boy of twelve.

The true story of this book was apparently known to, and understood by, the Don writer Alexander Serafimovich, who was by then well on in years. Because of his passionate enthusiasm for everything to do with the Don, however, he was primarily concerned to see that the way was open for a brilliant novel about the region: any revelations about its having been written by some “White Guard” officer could only have prevented it being printed. And, once he had overcome the opposition of the editors of the magazine Oktyahr, Serifimovich insisted that The Quiet Don should be published, clearing a path for it with a glowing review in Pravda (April 19, 1928).

In a country with a different political system, an investigation might still have bean started. But the possibility of any such development was nipped in the bud by a “fiery” outburst in Pravda (March 29, 1929) from five “proletarian” writers (Serafimovich, Averbach, Kirshon, Fadeyev, Staysky): they declared that those who were spreading doubt and suspicion were “enemies of the proletarian dictatorship” and threatened to “bring them to cowl” — a very decisive step in those days, as we know: And all the rumours were immediately silenced. Soon afterwards Stalin himself, the unchallengeable, described Sholokhov as an “outstanding writer of our time”. There was no arguing with that.

There are in fact people who were alive then and are still living now who are convinced that Sholokhov did not write this book. But, restrained by the general fear of a powerful man and of his capacity for taking revenge, they will never speak their minds. The history of Soviet culture in general can show a fair number of instances of important ideas or literary and scientific works being plagiarized, for the most part from people who had been arrested and perished (by people who had informed on them or been their students), and in virtually every case the true facts remained concealed, while the plagiarists continued to enjoy all their rights unhindered.

Nothing was done to confirm Sholokhov’s authorship or to explain either the speed or scale of his achievement by the accounts of him which appeared in print, whether they were concerned with the way in which he did his creative writing (Serafimovich on this subject: he worked only at night, because in the daytime he was overwhelmed by visitors); or with his method of gathering material—“he often arrives at some Collective farm, and gathers the old men and the young people together. They drink and dance, and tell in-numerable stories about the war and the Revolution . . .” (quoted from [p.7 of the book by I. Lezhnev, Mikhail Sholokhov, Sovetsky pisatel, 1948); or with his handling of historical material, or with his notebooks. And here is another point: no rough drafts or manuscripts of the novel are preserved in any archives, none has ever been produced or shown to anybody (apart from Anatoli Sofronov [Soviet writer and literary official; editor of the popular weekly Ogonyok], who is too biased a witness for his evidence to count). In 1942, when the battlefront came close to the village of Veshenskaya; Sholokhov, as the most important man in the area, could have obtained transport even before the district Party committee did, and evacuated his precious archives. But through some strange indifference, this was not done. And the whole of his archives, we are now told, were lost in the bombardment.

A careful examination of The Quiet Don itself reveals many odd features. Coming from a major literary artist, there are instances of inexplicable slovenliness and forgetfulness: some of the characters simply disappear (the author’s favourite characters, too, the vehicles of his cherished ideas!). There are breaks in personal story-lines; insertions of substantial episodes which have no connexion whatever with the main narrative, and differ in quality; and finally, in a work which displays great literary sensibility, places where passages of the crudest propaganda have been inserted (literature had not yet become accustomed to this in the 1920s).

Even at a first reading, I think, one notices a kind of sudden break between the second and third volumes, as though the author were starting to write a different book. True, in a lengthy work which takes years to write this can perfectly well happen, and one must also take into account the speed with which the historical events described were moving. But while the last sections of The Quiet Don were still appearing Sholokhov also began to publish Virgin Soil Upturned, and anyone with an ordinary feeling for literature can see, without having to undertake any special research, that this is not the same thing, not on the same level, not the same canvas, not the same perception of the world. The contrived, coarse humour of Shukar alone is quite incompatible with the style of the author of The Quiet Don, and it grates on the ear at once, as out of place as if Rachmaninov were to sit down at the piano and start playing the wrong notes.

What is also surprising is that over the years Sholokhov has given permission for numerous unprincipled corrections to The Quiet Don—political and factual, affecting both the plot and the style (they have been analysed in the émigré journal Mosty [Bridges] No 15, 1970). One is particularly struck by the way in which he permitted the vocabulary of the novel to be flattened out in the 1933 edition (see Nuvy mir, 1967, No 7, article by F. Biryukov): many forms of speech used in the Don region which made such an impression when the book first appeared have been excised and replaced by unexpressive words in common use. To wipe out all the bright colours and reduce it to a dull greyness—could any artist really do that to a work which he has created with so much effort? Of the two mothers of the disputed child, the true mother was the one who preferred to hand the child over rather than have it mutilated.

In the Don region itself this whole question is by no means looked at in a purely academic light. There the memory has not run dry, but still trickles along in a thin stream, the memory both of the special quality of the region in the past and of its favourite authors, among whom the first place unquestionably belongs to Fyodor Dmitriyevich Kryukov (1870-1920), a devoted contributor to Korolenko’s Russkoye hagatstvo [Russian Wealth], a populist by persuasion and a member of the First State Duma from the Don. In 1965 an article by V. Molozhavenko entitled “About a Certain Undeservedly Forgotten Name” appeared in the Rostov newspaper Molot [Hammer]—an article about Kryukov, whose name it had been forbidden to mention for half a century because in the Civil War he had been secretary of the Cossack assembly.

What exactly the author of this article, carefully phrased to evade the censor, is trying to say is immediately apparent to any informed reader: by means of the song about the Don, Grigori Melekhov [the hero of The Quiet Don) is linked not with the young commissar in the grain-requisitioning detachment who is left behind to ravage the value but with Kryukov, who joined the retreat in which Melekhov is shown taking part in 1920. The author then completes the story of Kryukov’s death from typhus, describing the concern which he felt on his deathbed for his precious box of manuscripts which might fall into anybody’s hands “as though he had a presentiment of disaster, and probably not without good reason”. That concern, that pain which the dead classic author of the Don had suffered, made itself heard once again half a century later in the very citadel of Sholokhov’s domain — in Rostov-on-Don ! And not long afterwards they organized a crude “refutation”, once again there was a bellow from the Party, once again from Moscow—just a year and a day later (Sovetskaya Rossiya, August 14, 1966, “About a Certain Undeservedly Resuscitated Name” [by A. Pintolsky]).

Over fifty years after the event the possibility of any judicial investigation of this literary mystery has probably been let slip for good, and there is no longer any point in looking forward to it. The possibility of a literary investigation, on the other hand, is always open: it is not too late for it to take place a 100 or even 200 years from now. But at the same time it would be a pity if our own generation were to pass away without ever learning the truth.

I have been very encouraged by the fact that a highly gifted literary critic, whom we shall call “D” for the time being, took it upon himself to carry out this task (among many others). People in the West, where it is not customary to do a job without some form of research, will readily understand that “D” could not afford to spend too much time on work which brought him no return. People in the East will also understand only too well that it was work which could have laid “D” open to trouble and led to the wreck of his entire life. Working at odd moments, though over a period of several years, “D” studied the relevant material, drew up a general plan for a possible study formulated a hypothesis about the contribution made by the true author and the additional material introduced later by the uninvited “co-author”, and set himself the task of separating the first from the second “D” hoped, to complete his work by reconstructing the original text, omitting passages which the true author had not written or which had been spoiled in the course of the “co-author”’s rewriting.

Alas, he wrote only as much—comparatively little—as is now published in the present book: a few short chapters, not all of them arranged in their proper order with uncorrected repetitions and gaps still waiting to be filled. In the very last months of his life, during a serious illness, “D”’s work gathered speed, and a month before his death he wrote to me:


During the spring and summer, despite all kinds of obstacles, I wrote three new chapters which at last brought the historical part to (satisfactory) completion. These chapters now only have to be polished and smoothed out, and I hope that will not present any difficulties. Then I shall start to press ahead with putting the second part in order (Poetics). Gradually, in ordinary pencil, I am making the planned restoration, but for the moment only in terms of composition. The phraseological and lexical side of it will emerge automatically after the Poetics. The historical commentary is acquiring a new function. It will not be, as I supposed earlier, only something which buttresses my researches. It will be an essential part of the work itself.

I believe that by the spring I shall have completed what I have planned, and now as never before I understand the importance of this first part of my work. It is, after all, not a matter of exposing one individual, nor even of doing another the homage which is his, due, but of reconstituting the historical truth embodied in a document as truly great as the one I am studying. This is something I must now carry through to the end. I believe I shall succeed.

As for the detective part, I have decided to draw up a short summary of this second book of mine with an appendix giving the assembled documentation (bibliography, etc), as well as the two chapters which have already been written. This, together with the summary, will appear as an Appendix in the event of my death. A short statement by the publisher will say that it is hoped a completed version of the second part will he found. What if my life should be prolonged and the book completed? The manuscript found posthumously will make a second book. Such are my plans.

But not only did “D” not succeed in carrying out all this; he died among strangers, and it is far from certain that his notes and writings of those last few months have not gone missing.

Once again history has kept a tight hold on a cherished secret. I regret that even now I do not dare to reveal “D”’s name and thus honour his memory. But that time will come.

Meanwhile, even these fragments, taken from different parts of the book and written at different times, help to make a great deal clear. The way has been opened for a conscientious and capable literary critic to carry through the project to the final stage of which the investigator, now dead, dreamt. It is a project of the first importance for readers of The Quiet Don: it will enable them to read this great book at last without being confused by the later additions, distortions and omissions, and restore to it the distinction of being a unique and unimpeachable witness of the terrible times in which it was written.

The purpose of this publication is to appeal for help from anyone who might wish to assist In the remaining research. Because of the time which has elapsed and the absence of any actual manuscripts is purely one of literary analysis, of examining and elucidating all the riddles of The Quiet Don which have prevented it becoming a book of greater quality than it is today—the riddles of its unevenness and its internal contradictions.

If we do not analyse this book and this problem, what will all our Russian literary scholarship in the twentieth century be worth? Surely all its best efforts are not going to be spent on officially approved projects?

1974