And Quiet Flows the Don Totally Explained

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And Quiet Flows the Don or Quietly Flows the Don (1934) is the first part of the great Don epic (Tikhii Don / Тихий дон) written by Mikhail Sholokhov. It originally appeared in serialized form between 1928 and 1940. The English translation of the first half of this monumental work appeared under this title in 1934.

Plot summary

The novel deals with the life of the Cossacks living in the Don River valley during the early 20th century, probably around 1912, just prior to World War I. The plot revolves around the Melekhov family of Tatarsk, who are descendants of a cossack who, to the horror of many, took a Turkish captive as a wife during the Crimean War. Accused of witchcraft by Melekhov's superstitious neighbours, she's killed. Their descendants, the son and grandsons, who are the protagonists of the story, are therefore often nicknamed "Turks". Nevertheless, they command a high amount of respect among people in Tatarsk. The second eldest son of the house, Grigori Panteleimonovich Melekhov, is a promising young soldier who falls in love with Aksinia, the wife of Stepan Astakhov, a family friend. There is no love between them and Stepan regularly beats her. Grigori and Aksinia's romance and elopement raises a feud between her husband and his family. The outcome of this romance is the focus of the plot as well as the impending World and Civil Wars which draw up the best young Cossack men for what will be two of Russia's bloodiest wars. The action moves to the Austro-Hungarian front, where Grigory ends up saving Stepan's life, but that doesn't end the feud. Grigory, at his father's insistence, has taken a wife, Natalya, but is unhappy, as he still loves Aksinia.
   The book deals not only with the struggles and suffering of the Cossacks, but the landscape itself is vividly brought to life. There are also many folk songs referenced throughout the novel.
   "And Quiet Flows the Don" grew out of an earlier, unpublished work, the "Donshina". I began the novel by describing the event of the Kornilov putsch in 1917. Then it became clear that this putsch, and more importantly, the role of the Cossacks in these events, wouldn't be understood without a Cossack prehistory, and so I began with the description of the life of the Don Cossacks just before the beginning of World War I. (from M.A. Sholokhov: Seminarii, (1962) by F.A. Abramovic and V.V. Gura, quoted in "Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov", by L.L. Litus)
   Grigory Melekhov is based on two Cossacks from Veshenskaya, Pavel Nazarovich Kudinov and Kharlampii Vasilyevich Yermakov, who were key figures in the anti-Bolshevist struggle of the upper Don.

Literary significance and criticism

The novel is often compared to War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. Like the Tolstoy novel, And Quiet Flows the Don is an epic picture of Russian life during a time of crisis and examines it through political, military, romantic, and civilian lenses.
   Many have claimed, most notably Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, that Sholokhov plagiarized most of the novel from another author Fyodor Kryukov, a Cossack and anti-Bolshevik, who died in 1920 of typhoid fever. The main thrust of these critics is that Sholokhov was much too young (mid-twenties) when the opening parts of the book were written and he couldn't have written such an unbiased account of the Russian Revolution. A statistical analysis by V. P. and T. G. Fomenko also came to the conclusion that the book was plagiarized. Furthermore, Ze'ev Bar-Sela, believes that although the book was plagiarised, it was plagiarised from a man called Vinyamin Alekseevich Krasnushkin, and not from Kryukov.
   Critics also pointed out that the first part is better written than the second, but this could be explained by the fact that Sholokhov wrote much of the second part about a year before he started the first.
   Felix Kuznetsov, in his 2005 study, "Tikhii Don": Sudba i pravda velikogo romana ("Silent Don": the fate and truth of a great novel), points to that and to the many real-life prototypes for Sholokhov's characters, that he'd have known from his youth in Veshenskaya, as evidence of his authorship.
   Subsequent computer studies done by Geir Kjetsaa in 1984 supported the claim that Sholokov did in fact write And Quiet Flows the Don. Zeev Bar-Sella offers evidence to the contrary in Literary trench. Project "Writer Sholokhov" (Литературный котлован. Проект "писатель Шолохов").
   Sholokhov's books subsequent to Quiet Flows the Don are generally considered not to be of the same caliber and are widely criticized; however this is the case with many authors, and isn't necessarily evidence of plagiarism.

Awards and nominations

The novel won the Stalin Prize in 1941 and its author won the Nobel Prize in 1965.

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

The novel has been adapted for the screen three times, in 1931 by Ivan Pravov and Olga Preobrazhenskaya, in 1957 by Sergei Gerasimov (starring Elina Bystritskaya) and in 1992-1993 by Sergei Bondarchuk (starring Rupert Everett). The last was shown on Russian television in 2006 as a seven-part miniseries, and released worldwide in a three-hour version. Ivan Dzerzhinsky based his opera Quiet Flows the Don (Timhiy Don) on the novel, with the libretto adapted by his brother Leonid. Premiered in October 1935, it became wildly popular after Stalin saw and praised it a few months later. The opera was proclaimed a model of socialist realism in music and won Dzerzhinsky a Stalin Prize.

Release details

1934, USA, Alfred A. Knopf (ISBN NA), Pub date ? ? 1934, hardback (First Eng. trans edition)
1934, UK, Putnam (ISBN NA), Pub date ? ? 1934, hardback
1977, USSR, Progress Press (ISBN ?), Pub date ? ? 1974, hardback (in 4 volumes & in Russian)
1988, USSR, Raduga Publishers (ISBN 5-05-001680-0 & 5-05-001681-9), Pub date of unabridged English edition, hardback (in 2 volumes)

Footnotes

Further Information

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