Book Recommendation: And Quiet Flows the Don
You’ve probably never heard of And Quiet Flows the Don, even though its author, Mikhail Sholokhov, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1965. This may have something to do with the controversy surrounding Sholokhov—that he plagiarized his magnum opus from a dead White Army officer—or simply because the works other Russian authors are preferred in the English-speaking world. Regardless, it is one of the gems of Russian literature and its early-20th-century setting makes it one of the more accessible works.
In the West, Sholokhov’s writing is often overshadowed by that of Boris Pasternak, who also won the Nobel Prize in Literature and whose most famous novel, Doctor Zhivago, is also centered in the events of the Russian Revolution and the Civil War. The Soviet establishment did not approve of Doctor Zhivago, and Pasternak was compelled to reject the honor. Even then, he faced censure and risked deportation; the CIA’s involvement in the Nobel Prize campaign certainly didn’t help him. The merits of Doctor Zhivago aside, And Quiet flows the Don approaches the tumultuous events in early 20th-century Russia not from the perspective of an urbane physician in Moscow, but from that of agrarian warriors at the edge of the empire.
And Quiet Flows the Don tells the story of the Melekhov family: Don Cossacks with a proud tradition of service to the Russian tsars. The narrative revolves around the family’s second son, Gregor, a rebellious teen who has an affair with his neighbor’s wife, Aksenia, before going off to the Austrian front with his cavalry regiment in WWI. What follows is a story of action, love, betrayal, victory, and loss, as we follow the Melekhovs and their fellow villagers through Russia’s involvement in WWI, the Russian Revolution, and the disastrous Civil War. Changing circumstances find Gregor fighting for the White Army, the Red Army, and for the Don Cossacks after they rebelled against the Bolsheviks.
And Quiet Flows the Don draws on Sholokhov’s own experiences in his early life. Born in 1905, Sholokhov grew up in the Don Host Oblast, but his family (Russian father, Ukrainian mother) were considered “outsiders” and did not have the right to vote for officials in the regional government. At 13, with the outbreak of the Civil War, Sholokhov took sides with the Red Army—as was common for the non-Cossack outsiders of that region—to fight against the White army, popular with the Cossacks. He began writing after the war, commencing work on And Quiet Flows the Don in 1926. The first three parts of the book were serialized and published from 1928 to 1932. The final part was published in 1940.
Almost immediately after the first sections were published, Sholokhov was accused of plagiarism. The newspaper Pravda conducted a public investigation and concluded that there was no evidence of plagiarism. In the 1960s, Alexander Solzhenitsyn renewed the allegations, but no convincing new evidence was produced, and analysis in more recent decades supports the assertion that Sholokhov was in fact the author of And Quiet Flows the Don.
Stalin was a fan of And Quiet Flows the Don, and at first glance it is hard to imagine how that might have been. The story is sympathetic to the cause of the White Army and to the Cossacks who revolted against communist rule. It even details atrocities committed by the Red Army against the working people. Other authors faced the gulag or exile for their own portrayals of the realities of life in the Soviet Union, but Sholokhov was a member of the party and in good standing. By writing a historical novel, Sholokhov was not handcuffed by requirements of the state-sponsored Soviet Realist style, which required a positive spin on behalf of the party, and he avoided criticizing the Stalin-led Soviet regime. Furthermore, the Red Army as described in And Quiet Flows the Don was commanded by the Ukrainian-Russian Marxist revolutionary Leon Trotsky—Stalin’s rival—thus the blame for any excessive savagery of the Red Army could be placed at his feet and not at those of the party. It may also be worth noting that the publication dates of And Quiet Flows the Don, 1928 for initial serialization and 1940 for the final portion, correspond with the year of Trotsky’s exile from Russia and the year of his assassination in Mexico, respectively.
And Quiet Flows the Don is a masterful blend of history and fiction; the characters are vivid and fully formed, and Sholokhov’s love for the true main character—the steppe—shines through in his rich descriptions of the vast countryside. It’s one of my all-time favorite books. Pick up a copy this summer and enjoy a well-crafted tale.