Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov (/ˈʃɔːləˌkɔːf, -ˌkɒf/;[1] Russian: Михаи́л Алекса́ндрович Шо́лохов; May 24*[O.S. May 11]*1905 – February 21, 1984) was a Soviet/Russian novelist and winner of the 1965 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is known for writing about life and fate of Don Cossacks during the Russian Revolution, the civil war and the period of collectivization, primarily the famous And Quiet Flows the Don.

Life and work

Sholokhov was born in Russia, in the "land of the Cossacks" – the Kruzhilin hamlet, part of stanitsa Vyoshenskaya, in the former Administrative Region of the Don Cossack Army.

His father, Aleksander Mikhailovich (1865–1925), was a member of the lower middle class, at times a farmer, cattle trader, and miller. Sholokhov's mother, Anastasia Danilovna Chernikova (1871–1942), the widow of a Cossack, came from Ukrainian peasant stock (her father was a peasant in the Chernihiv oblast). She did not become literate until a point in her life when she wanted to correspond with her son.

Sholokhov attended schools in Karginskaya*(ru), Moscow, Boguchar, and Veshenskaya until 1918, when he joined the Bolshevik side in the Russian civil war at the age of 13. He spent the next few years fighting in the civil war.

Sholokhov began writing at 17. He completed his first literary work, the short story, "The Birthmark", at 19.

In 1922 Sholokhov moved to Moscow to become a journalist, but he had to support himself through manual labour. He was a stevedore, stonemason, and accountant from 1922 to 1924, but he also intermittently participated in writers' "seminars". His first published work was a satirical article, The Test (Oct. 19, 1923).[2]


Mikhail Sholokhov and his wife, 1924

New memorial to Mikhail Sholokhov in Moscow, on Gogol Boulevard
In 1924 Sholokhov returned to Veshenskaya and devoted himself entirely to writing. In the same year he married Maria Petrovna Gromoslavskaia (1901*-1992), the daughter of Pyotr Gromoslavsky, the ataman of Bukanovskaya*(ru) village; they had two daughters and two sons.

His first book Tales from the Don, a volume of stories about his native region during World War I and the Russian Civil War, largely based on his personal experiences, was published in 1926. The story "Nakhalyonok", partially based on his own childhood, was later made into a popular film.

In the same year Sholokhov began writing And Quiet Flows the Don, which earned the Stalin Prize and took him fourteen years to complete (1926–1940). It became the most-read work of Soviet fiction and was heralded as a powerful example of socialist realism, and it earned him the 1965 Nobel Prize in Literature. It deals with the experiences of the Cossacks before and during World War I and the Russian Civil War.

Virgin Soil Upturned, which earned the Lenin Prize, took 28 years to complete. It was composed of two parts: Seeds of Tomorrow (1932) and Harvest on the Don (1960), and reflects life during collectivization in the Don area.

The short story "The Fate of a Man" (1957) was made into a popular Russian film.

His unfinished novel, They Fought for Their Country is about World War II fighting in the USSR (in Russia the Soviet-German war during World War II is commonly referred to as the Great Patriotic War).

During World War II Sholokhov wrote about the Soviet war efforts for various journals. He also covered the devastation caused by Nazi troops along the Don. His mother was killed when Veshenskaya was bombed in 1942.

Sholokhov's collected works were published in eight volumes between 1956 and 1960.

Authorship of texts

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (/ˈɡoʊɡəl, -ɡɔːl/;[4] Russian: Никола́й Васи́льевич Го́голь, tr. Nikolay Vasilievich Gogol; IPA:*[nʲɪkɐˈlaj vɐˈsʲilʲjɪvʲɪtɕ ˈgogəlʲ]; 31 March*[O.S. 19 March]*1809*– 4 March*[O.S. 21 February]*1852) was a Russian[5][6][7][8][9] dramatist of Ukrainian origin.[6][10][11][12][13]

Although Gogol was considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in his work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of surrealism and the grotesque ("The Nose", "Viy", "The Overcoat," "Nevsky Prospekt"). His early works, such as Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, were influenced by his Ukrainian upbringing, Ukrainian culture and folklore.[14][15] His later writing satirised political corruption in the Russian Empire (The Government Inspector, Dead Souls). The novel Taras Bulba (1835) and the play Marriage (1842), along with the short stories "Diary of a Madman", "The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich", "The Portrait" and "The Carriage", round out the tally of his best-known works.

Early life

Gogol was born in the Ukrainian Cossack village of Sorochyntsi,[6] in Poltava Governorate of the Russian Empire, present-day Ukraine. His mother descended from Leonty Kosyarovsky, an officer of the Lubny Regiment in 1710. His father Vasily Gogol-Yanovsky, a descendant of Ukrainian Cossacks (see Lyzohub family) and who died when Gogol was 15 years old, belonged to the 'petty gentry', wrote poetry in Ukrainian and Russian, and was an amateur Ukrainian-language playwright. As was typical of the left-bank Ukrainian gentry of the early nineteenth century, the family spoke Ukrainian as well as Russian. As a child, Gogol helped stage Ukrainian-language plays in his uncle's home theater.[16]

Spasskoye-Lutovinovo, Turgenev's estate near Oryol
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was born into a family of Russian land-owners in Oryol, Russia, on November 9, 1818 (October 28 Old Style). His father, Sergei Nikolaevich Turgenev, a colonel in the Russian cavalry, was a chronic philanderer[citation needed]. Ivan's mother, Varvara Petrovna Lutovinova, was a wealthy heiress, who had an unhappy childhood and suffered in her marriage.

Ivan's father died when Ivan was sixteen, leaving him and his brother Nicolas to be brought up by their abusive mother. Ivan's childhood was a lonely one, in constant fear of his mother who beat him often.

After the standard schooling for a son of a gentleman, Turgenev studied for one year at the University of Moscow and then moved to the University of Saint Petersburg from 1834 to 1837, focusing on Classics, Russian literature, and philology. From 1838 until 1841 he studied philosophy, particularly Hegel, and history at the University of Berlin. He returned to Saint Petersburg to complete his master's examination.

Turgenev was impressed with German society and returned home believing that Russia could best improve itself by incorporating ideas from the Age of Enlightenment. Like many of his educated contemporaries, he was particularly opposed to serfdom. In 1841, Turgenev started his career in Russian civil service and spent two years working for the Ministry of Interior (1843-1845).

When Turgenev was a child, a family serf had read to him verses from the Rossiad of Mikhail Kheraskov, a celebrated poet of the 18th century. Turgenev's early attempts in literature, poems, and sketches gave indications of genius and were favorably spoken of by Vissarion Belinsky, then the leading Russian literary critic. During the latter part of his life, Turgenev did not reside much in Russia: he lived either at Baden-Baden or Paris, often in proximity to the family of the celebrated opera singer Pauline Viardot, with whom he had a lifelong affair.

Turgenev never married, but he had some affairs with his family's serfs, one of which resulted in the birth of his illegitimate daughter, Paulinette. He was tall and broad-shouldered, but was timid, restrained, and soft-spoken. When Turgenev was 19, while traveling on a steamboat in Germany, the boat caught fire and Turgenev reacted in a cowardly manner. Rumors circulated in Russia and followed him for his entire career, providing the basis for his story A Fire at Sea. His closest literary friend was Gustave Flaubert, with whom he shared similar social and aesthetic ideas. Both rejected extremist right and left political views, and carried a nonjudgmental, although rather pessimistic, view of the world. His relations with Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky were often strained, as the two were, for various reasons, dismayed by Turgenev's seeming preference for Western Europe.

Turgenev, unlike Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, lacked religious motives in his writings, representing the more social aspect to the reform movement. He was considered to be an agnostic.[2] Tolstoy, more than Dostoyevsky, at first anyway, rather despised Turgenev. While traveling together in Paris, Tolstoy wrote in his diary, "Turgenev is a bore." His rocky friendship with Tolstoy in 1861 wrought such animosity that Tolstoy challenged Turgenev to a duel, afterwards apologizing. The two did not speak for 17 years, but never broke family ties. Dostoyevsky parodies Turgenev in his novel The Devils (1872) through the character of the vain novelist Karmazinov, who is anxious to ingratiate himself with the radical youth. However, in 1880, Dostoyevsky's speech at the unveiling of the Pushkin monument brought about a reconciliation of sorts with Turgenev, who, like many in the audience, was moved to tears by his rival's eloquent tribute to the Russian spirit.


Turgenev receiving honorary doctorate, Oxford, 1879
Turgenev occasionally visited England, and in 1879 the honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Law was conferred upon him by the University of Oxford.

Turgenev died from spinal tumor at Bougival, near Paris, on September 3, 1883. His remains were taken to Russia and buried in Volkoff Cemetery in St. Petersburg. On his death bed he pleaded with Tolstoy: "My friend, return to literature!" After this Tolstoy wrote such works as The Death of Ivan Ilyich and The Kreutzer Sonata.

Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (Russian: Алексе́й Макси́мович Пешко́в or Пе́шков;[1] 28 March*[O.S. 16 March]*1868*– 18 June 1936), primarily known as Maxim (Maksim) Gorky (/ˈɡɔːrki/;[2] Russian: Макси́м Го́рький), was a Russian and Soviet writer, a founder of the socialist realism literary method and a political activist.[3] He was also a five-time nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature.[4] Around fifteen years before success as a writer, he frequently changed jobs and roamed across the Russian Empire; these experiences would later influence his writing. Gorky's most famous works were The Lower Depths (1902), Twenty-six Men and a Girl, The Song of the Stormy Petrel, My Childhood,The Mother, Summerfolk and Children of the Sun. He had an association with fellow Russian writers Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov; Gorky would later mention them in his memoirs.

Gorky was active with the emerging Marxist social-democratic movement. He publicly opposed the Tsarist regime, and for a time closely associated himself with Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov's Bolshevik wing of the party. For a significant part of his life, he was exiled from Russia and later the Soviet Union. In 1932, he returned to Russia on Joseph Stalin's personal invitation and died there in June 1936.

Life

Early years
Born as Alexei Maximovich Peshkov on 28 March*[O.S. 16 March]*1868, in Nizhny Novgorod, Gorky became an orphan at the age of eleven. He was brought up by his grandmother[3] and ran away from home at the age of twelve in 1880. After an attempt at suicide in December 1887, he travelled on foot across the Russian Empire for five years, changing jobs and accumulating impressions used later in his writing.[3]

As a journalist working for provincial newspapers, he wrote under the pseudonym Иегудиил Хламида (Jehudiel Khlamida).[5] He began using the pseudonym "Gorky" (from горький; literally "bitter") in 1892, while working in Tiflis for the newspaper Кавказ (The Caucasus).[6] The name reflected his simmering anger about life in Russia and a determination to speak the bitter truth. Gorky's first book Очерки и рассказы (Essays and Stories) in 1898 enjoyed a sensational success, and his career as a writer began. Gorky wrote incessantly, viewing literature less as an aesthetic practice (though he worked hard on style and form) than as a moral and political act that could change the world. He described the lives of people in the lowest strata and on the margins of society, revealing their hardships, humiliations, and brutalisation, but also their inward spark of humanity.[3]

Aleksandr Isayevich[a] Solzhenitsyn (/ˌsoʊlʒəˈniːtsɪn, ˌsɔːl-/;[2] Russian: Алекса́ндр Иса́евич Солжени́цын, pronounced*[ɐlʲɪˈksandr ɪˈsaɪvʲɪtɕ səlʐɨˈnʲitsɨn]; 11 December 1918*– 3 August 2008)[3] (often Romanized to Alexandr or Alexander)[4][5] was a Russian novelist, historian, and short story writer. He was an outspoken critic of the Soviet Union and communism and helped to raise global awareness of its Gulag forced labor camp system. He was allowed to publish only one work in the Soviet Union, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962), in the periodical Novy Mir. After this he had to publish in the West, most notably Cancer Ward (1968), August 1914 (1971), and The Gulag Archipelago (1973). Solzhenitsyn was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature".[6] Solzhenitsyn was afraid to go to Stockholm to receive his award for fear that he would not be allowed to reenter. He was eventually expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974, but returned to Russia in 1994 after the state's dissolution.

Biography

Early years
Solzhenitsyn was born in Kislovodsk, RSFSR (now in Stavropol Krai, Russia). His mother, Taisiya Zakharovna (née Shcherbak) was of Ukrainian descent.[7][8] Her father had risen from humble beginnings to become a wealthy landowner, acquiring a large estate in the Kuban region in the northern foothills of the Caucasus.[9] During World War I, Taisiya went to Moscow to study. While there she met and married Isaakiy Solzhenitsyn, a young officer in the Imperial Russian Army of Cossack origins and fellow native of the Caucasus region. The family background of his parents is vividly brought to life in the opening chapters of August 1914, and in the later Red Wheel novels.[10]

In 1918, Taisia became pregnant with Aleksandr. On 15 June, shortly after her pregnancy was confirmed, Isaakiy was killed in a hunting accident. Aleksandr was raised by his widowed mother and aunt in lowly circumstances. His earliest years coincided with the Russian Civil War. By 1930 the family property had been turned into a collective farm. Later, Solzhenitsyn recalled that his mother had fought for survival and that they had to keep his father's background in the old Imperial Army a secret. His educated mother (who never remarried) encouraged his literary and scientific learnings and raised him in the Russian Orthodox faith;[11][12] she died in 1944.[13]

Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin (/ˈbuːniːn/[1] or /ˈbuːnɪn/; Russian: Ива́н Алексе́евич Бу́нин; IPA:*[ɪˈvan ɐlʲɪˈksʲejɪvʲɪtɕ ˈbunʲɪn]; 22 October*[O.S. 10 October]*1870*– 8 November 1953) was the first Russian writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was noted for the strict artistry with which he carried on the classical Russian traditions in the writing of prose and poetry. The texture of his poems and stories, sometimes referred to as "Bunin brocade", is considered to be one of the richest in the language.

Best known for his short novels The Village (1910) and Dry Valley (1912), his autobiographical novel The Life of Arseniev (1933, 1939), the book of short stories Dark Avenues (1946) and his 1917–1918 diary (Cursed Days, 1926), Bunin was a revered figure among anti-communist white emigres, European critics, and many of his fellow writers, who viewed him as a true heir to the tradition of realism in Russian literature established by Tolstoy and Chekhov.

Biography

Early life
Ivan Bunin was born on his parental estate in Voronezh province in Central Russia, the third and youngest son of Aleksey Nikolayevich Bunin (1827–1906) and Lyudmila Aleksandrovna Bunina (née Chubarova, 1835–1910). He had two younger sisters: Masha (Maria Bunina-Laskarzhevskaya, 1873–1930) and Nadya (the latter died very young) and two elder brothers, Yuly and Yevgeny.[2][3] Having come from a long line of rural gentry with a distinguished ancestry including Polish roots, Bunin was especially proud that poets Anna Bunina (1774–1829) and Vasily Zhukovsky (1783–1852) were among his ancestors. He wrote in his 1952 autobiography:

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (/ˈtʃɛkɔːf, -ɒf/;[1] Russian: Анто́н Па́влович Че́хов, pronounced*[ɐnˈton ˈpavləvʲɪtɕ ˈtɕɛxəf]; 29 January 1860[2] – 15 July 1904)[3] was a Russian playwright and short story writer, who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short fiction in history. His career as a playwright produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics.[4][5] Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre.[6] Chekhov practiced as a medical doctor throughout most of his literary career: "Medicine is my lawful wife", he once said, "and literature is my mistress."[7]

Chekhov renounced the theatre after the reception of The Seagull in 1896, but the play was revived to acclaim in 1898 by Konstantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre, which subsequently also produced Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and premiered his last two plays, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. These four works present a challenge to the acting ensemble[8] as well as to audiences, because in place of conventional action Chekhov offers a "theatre of mood" and a "submerged life in the text".[9]

Chekhov had at first written stories only for financial gain, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations which have influenced the evolution of the modern short story.[10] He made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them.[11]

Biography

Childhood

Birth house of Anton Chekhov in Taganrog, Russia

Young Chekhov in 1882

The Taganrog Boys Gymnasium in the late 19th century. The cross on top is no longer present

Portrait of young Chekhov in country clothes

Young Chekhov (left) with brother Nikolai in 1882

Chekhov family and friends in 1890 (Top row, left to right) Ivan, Alexander, Father; (second row) unknown friend, Lika Mizinova, Masha, Mother, Seryozha Kiselev; (bottom row) Misha, Anton

Chekhov's classic look: pince-nez, hat and bow-tie

Melikhovo, now a museum

Anton Chekhov in 1893

Osip Braz: "Portrait of Anton Chekhov"

Chekhov with Leo Tolstoy at Yalta, 1900

Chekhov and Olga, 1901, on their honeymoon
Anton Chekhov was born on the feast day of St. Anthony the Great (17 January Old Style) 29 January 1860, the third of six surviving children, in Taganrog, a port on the Sea of Azov in southern Russia. His father, Pavel Yegorovich Chekhov, the son of a former serf and his Ukrainian wife,[12] were from the village Vilkhovatka near Kobeliaky (Poltava Region in modern-day Ukraine) and ran a grocery store. A director of the parish choir, devout Orthodox Christian, and physically abusive father, Pavel Chekhov has been seen by some historians as the model for his son's many portraits of hypocrisy.[13] Chekhov's mother, Yevgeniya (Morozova), was an excellent storyteller who entertained the children with tales of her travels with her cloth-merchant father all over Russia.[14][15][16] "Our talents we got from our father," Chekhov remembered, "but our soul from our mother."[17] In adulthood, Chekhov criticised his brother Alexander's treatment of his wife and children by reminding him of Pavel's tyranny: "Let me ask you to recall that it was despotism and lying that ruined your mother's youth. Despotism and lying so mutilated our childhood that it's sickening and frightening to think about it. Remember the horror and disgust we felt in those times when Father threw a tantrum at dinner over too much salt in the soup and called Mother a fool."[18][19]

Chekhov attended the Greek School in Taganrog and the Taganrog Gymnasium (since renamed the Chekhov Gymnasium), where he was kept down for a year at fifteen for failing an examination in Ancient Greek.[20] He sang at the Greek Orthodox monastery in Taganrog and in his father's choirs. In a letter of 1892, he used the word "suffering" to describe his childhood and recalled:

When my brothers and I used to stand in the middle of the church and sing the trio "May my prayer be exalted", or "The Archangel's Voice", everyone looked at us with emotion and envied our parents, but we at that moment felt like little convicts.[21]

He later became an atheist.[22][23][24]

In 1876, Chekhov's father was declared bankrupt after overextending his finances building a new house, having been cheated by a contractor called Mironov.[25] To avoid debtor's prison he fled to Moscow, where his two eldest sons, Alexander and Nikolay, were attending university. The family lived in poverty in Moscow, Chekhov's mother physically and emotionally broken by the experience.[26] Chekhov was left behind to sell the family's possessions and finish his education.

Chekhov remained in Taganrog for three more years, boarding with a man called Selivanov who, like Lopakhin in The Cherry Orchard, had bailed out the family for the price of their house.[27] Chekhov had to pay for his own education, which he managed by private tutoring, catching and selling goldfinches, and selling short sketches to the newspapers, among other jobs.[28] He sent every ruble he could spare to his family in Moscow, along with humorous letters to cheer them up.[28] During this time, he read widely and analytically, including the works of Cervantes, Turgenev, Goncharov, and Schopenhauer,[29][30] and wrote a full-length comic drama, Fatherless, which his brother Alexander dismissed as "an inexcusable though innocent fabrication."[31] Chekhov also enjoyed a series of love affairs, one with the wife of a teacher.[28]

In 1879, Chekhov completed his schooling and joined his family in Moscow, having gained admission to the medical school at I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University.[32]

Early writings
Chekhov now assumed responsibility for the whole family.[33] To support them and to pay his tuition fees, he wrote daily short, humorous sketches and vignettes of contemporary Russian life, many under pseudonyms such as "Antosha Chekhonte" (Антоша Чехонте) and "Man without a Spleen" (Человек без селезенки). His prodigious output gradually earned him a reputation as a satirical chronicler of Russian street life, and by 1882 he was writing for Oskolki (Fragments), owned by Nikolai Leykin, one of the leading publishers of the time.[34] Chekhov's tone at this stage was harsher than that familiar from his mature fiction.[35][36]