And Quiet Flows the Don
Encyclopedia
And Quiet Flows the Don or Quietly Flows the Don (1934) is the first part of the great Don
epic Tikhiy Don (Тихий Дон, literally "The Quiet Don"), written by Michail Aleksandrovich 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.
s 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 is 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, Grigori Panteleevich 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, takes a wife, Natalya, but 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 And Quiet Flows the Don grew out of an earlier, unpublished work, the Donshina:
Grigori Melekhov is reportedly 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.
(1869) 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. Sholokhov was accused by Solzhenitsyn and others of plagiarizing the novel. However, an investigation in the late 1920s upheld Sholokhov's authorship of "Silent Don" and the allegations were denounced as malicious slander in Pravda.
During the second world war, Sholokhov's archive was destroyed in a bomb raid, and only the fourth volume survived. Sholokhov had his friend Vassily Kudashov, who was killed in the war, look after it. Following Kudashov's death, his widow took possession of the manuscript, but she never disclosed the fact of owning it. The manuscript was finally found by the Institute of World Literature of Russia's Academy of Sciences in 1999 with assistance from the Russian Government. The writing paper dates back to the 1920s: 605 pages are in Sholokhov's own hand, and 285 are transcribed by his wife Maria and sisters. However, there are claims that the manuscript is just a copy of the manuscript of Fyodor Kryukov
, the true author.
in 1965.
and Olga Preobrazhenskaya
, a second, 1958 adaption
was directed by Sergei Gerasimov and starred Elina Bystritskaya
and Pyotr Glebov
. In 1992-1993 a remake was directed by Sergei Bondarchuk
(starring Rupert Everett
); the film was not finished until 2006, when Fyodor Bondarchuk
completed the editing, and was shown on Russian television as a seven-part miniseries, followed by a worldwide DVD release: ...and Quiet Flows the Don.
Ivan Dzerzhinsky
based his opera Quiet Flows the Don (Tikhiy 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.
The lyrics for the folk song "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
" by Pete Seeger
and Joe Hickerson
were adapted from a Ukrainian folk song mentioned in And Quiet Flows the Don.
Don River (Russia)
The Don River is one of the major rivers of Russia. It rises in the town of Novomoskovsk 60 kilometres southeast from Tula, southeast of Moscow, and flows for a distance of about 1,950 kilometres to the Sea of Azov....
epic Tikhiy Don (Тихий Дон, literally "The Quiet Don"), written by Michail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov
Michail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov was a Soviet/Russian novelist and winner of the 1965 Nobel Prize in Literature. An asteroid in main-belt is named after him, 2448 Sholokhov.-Life and work:...
. 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 CossackCossack
Cossacks are a group of predominantly East Slavic people who originally were members of democratic, semi-military communities in what is today Ukraine and Southern Russia inhabiting sparsely populated areas and islands in the lower Dnieper and Don basins and who played an important role in the...
s living in the Don River
Don River (Russia)
The Don River is one of the major rivers of Russia. It rises in the town of Novomoskovsk 60 kilometres southeast from Tula, southeast of Moscow, and flows for a distance of about 1,950 kilometres to the Sea of Azov....
valley during the early 20th century, probably around 1912, just prior to World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. The plot revolves around the Melekhov family of Tatarsk, who are descendants of a cossack who, to the horror of many, took a Turkish
Turkish people
Turkish people, also known as the "Turks" , are an ethnic group primarily living in Turkey and in the former lands of the Ottoman Empire where Turkish minorities had been established in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Romania...
captive as a wife during the Crimean War
Crimean War
The Crimean War was a conflict fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...
. Accused of witchcraft by Melekhov's superstitious neighbours, she is killed. Their descendants, the son and grandsons, who are the protagonists of the story, are therefore often nicknamed "Turks
Turkish people
Turkish people, also known as the "Turks" , are an ethnic group primarily living in Turkey and in the former lands of the Ottoman Empire where Turkish minorities had been established in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Romania...
". Nevertheless, they command a high amount of respect among people in Tatarsk.
The second eldest son, Grigori Panteleevich 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
Eastern Front (World War I)
The Eastern Front was a theatre of war during World War I in Central and, primarily, Eastern Europe. The term is in contrast to the Western Front. Despite the geographical separation, the events in the two theatres strongly influenced each other...
, where Grigory ends up saving Stepan's life, but that doesn't end the feud. Grigory, at his father's insistence, takes a wife, Natalya, but still loves Aksinia. The book deals not only with the struggles and suffering of the Cossacks
Don Cossacks
Don Cossacks were Cossacks who settled along the middle and lower Don.- Etymology and origins :The Don Cossack Host was a frontier military organization from the end of the 16th until the early 20th century....
, but the landscape itself is vividly brought to life. There are also many folk songs
Ethnic Russian music
Ethnic Russian music specifically deals with the folk music traditions of the ethnic Russian people. It does not include the various forms of art music, which in Russia often contains folk melodies and folk elements or music of aother ethnic groups living in Russia.-History:The roots of Russian...
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 KornilovLavr KornilovLavr Georgiyevich Kornilov was a military intelligence officer, explorer, and general in the Imperial Russian Army during World War I and the ensuing Russian Civil War...
putsch in 1917. Then it became clear that this putsch, and more importantly, the role of the Cossacks in these events, would not 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. (quote from M.A. Sholokhov: Seminarii, (1962) by F.A. Abramovic and V.V. Gura, quoted in Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov, by L.L. Litus.)
Grigori Melekhov is reportedly based on two Cossacks from Veshenskaya
Veshenskaya
Veshenskaya, or Vyoshenskaya , colloquially known as Vyoshki, is a Cossack stanitsa in the northern, or upper, Don region, on the left bank of the Don. It is the administrative centre of the Sholokhovsky district...
, Pavel Nazarovich Kudinov and Kharlampii Vasilyevich Yermakov, who were key figures in the anti-Bolshevist struggle of the upper Don.
Literary significance, criticism, and accusations of plagiarism
The novel has been compared to War and PeaceWar and Peace
War and Peace is a novel by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy, first published in 1869. The work is epic in scale and is regarded as one of the most important works of world literature...
(1869) by Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
. 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. Sholokhov was accused by Solzhenitsyn and others of plagiarizing the novel. However, an investigation in the late 1920s upheld Sholokhov's authorship of "Silent Don" and the allegations were denounced as malicious slander in Pravda.
During the second world war, Sholokhov's archive was destroyed in a bomb raid, and only the fourth volume survived. Sholokhov had his friend Vassily Kudashov, who was killed in the war, look after it. Following Kudashov's death, his widow took possession of the manuscript, but she never disclosed the fact of owning it. The manuscript was finally found by the Institute of World Literature of Russia's Academy of Sciences in 1999 with assistance from the Russian Government. The writing paper dates back to the 1920s: 605 pages are in Sholokhov's own hand, and 285 are transcribed by his wife Maria and sisters. However, there are claims that the manuscript is just a copy of the manuscript of Fyodor Kryukov
Fyodor Kryukov
Fyodor Dmitrievich Kryukov February 1870 — 4 March 1920) was a Cossack writer and soldier in the White Army, died in 1920 of Typhoid fever. Various literary critics, most notably Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Roy Medvedev, claimed that Mikhail Sholokov plagiarised his work in order to write major...
, the true author.
Awards and nominations
The novel won the Stalin Prize in 1941 and its author won the Nobel PrizeNobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
in 1965.
Adaptations
The novel has been adapted for the screen three times: 1931 film by Ivan PravovIvan Pravov
Ivan Konstantinovich Pravov was a Russian and Soviet film director and screenwriter.-Filmography:director* The Women of Ryazan ; co-directed with Olga Preobrazhenskaya...
and Olga Preobrazhenskaya
Olga Preobrazhenskaya (director)
Olga Ivanovna Preobrazhenskaya was a Russian and Soviet actress and film director, one of the first female film directors.-Biography:Olga Preobrazhenskaya was born on 24 July 1881 in Moscow. In 1901–1904 she studied in the actor school of Moscow Art Theater and since 1905 worked in theaters in...
, a second, 1958 adaption
And Quiet Flows the Don (1958 film)
And Quiet Flows the Don is a three-part epic 1958 Soviet film directed by Sergei Gerasimov based on the novel of the same title by Mikhail Sholokhov. The first two parts of the film were released in October 1957 and the final third part in 1958...
was directed by Sergei Gerasimov and starred Elina Bystritskaya
Elina Bystritskaya
Elina Avraamovna Bystritskaya is a Soviet and Russian actress best known for her role of Axinia in Sergei Gerasimov's epic screening of Mikhail Sholokhov's novel And Quiet Flows the Don ....
and Pyotr Glebov
Pyotr Glebov
Pyotr Petrovich Glebov , was a Russian film and stage actor, best known for portraying Grigori Melekhov in the 1957 epic 'Tikhiy Don' , a trilogy directed by Sergei Gerasimov. .-References:...
. In 1992-1993 a remake was directed by Sergei Bondarchuk
Sergei Bondarchuk
Sergei Fedorovich Bondarchuk was a Soviet film director, screenwriter, and actor.- Biography :Born in Belozerka, in the Kherson Governorate, Sergei Bondarchuk spent his childhood in the cities of Yeysk and Taganrog, graduating from the Taganrog School Number 4 in 1938. His first performance as an...
(starring Rupert Everett
Rupert Everett
Rupert James Hector Everett is an English actor. He first came to public attention in 1981, when he was cast in Julian Mitchell's play and subsequent film Another Country as an openly gay student at an English public school, set in the 1930s...
); the film was not finished until 2006, when Fyodor Bondarchuk
Fyodor Bondarchuk
Fyodor Sergeyevich Bondarchuk is a Russian film director and actor. He is the director of the acclaimed film The 9th Company, and producer of the 2006 film Heat, where he starred as himself with his mother Irina Skobtseva....
completed the editing, and was shown on Russian television as a seven-part miniseries, followed by a worldwide DVD release: ...and Quiet Flows the Don.
Ivan Dzerzhinsky
Ivan Dzerzhinsky
Ivan Ivanovich Dzerzhinsky was a Russian composer. He is notable in that the work for which he best known, his opera Quiet Flows the Don , was more successful for its political potential than for any musical distinction.-Personal life and career:Born in Tambov, Dzerzhinsky had an extended formal...
based his opera Quiet Flows the Don (Tikhiy Don) on the novel, with the libretto adapted by his brother Leonid. Premiered in October 1935, it became wildly popular after Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
saw and praised it a few months later. The opera was proclaimed a model of socialist realism
Socialist realism
Socialist realism is a style of realistic art which was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in other communist countries. Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style having its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...
in music and won Dzerzhinsky a Stalin Prize.
The lyrics for the folk song "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
"Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" is a folk song. The first three verses were written by Pete Seeger in 1955, and published in Sing Out! magazine...
" by Pete Seeger
Pete Seeger
Peter "Pete" Seeger is an American folk singer and was an iconic figure in the mid-twentieth century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead...
and Joe Hickerson
Joe Hickerson
Joe Hickerson is a noted folk singer and songleader. For 35 years he was Librarian and Director of the Archive of Folk Song at the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress...
were adapted from a Ukrainian folk song mentioned in And Quiet Flows the Don.
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)
External links
(1931 version) (1957 version) (2006 version)- And Quiet Does not Flow the Don: Statistical Analysis of a Quarrel between Nobel Laureates Solzhenitsyn vs. Sholokhov, 2007
- Text of the novel (volume 1 only)