Mikhail Sholokhov

Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov (Russian: Михаил Александрович Шолохов, IPA: [ˈʂoləxəf]; 24 May [O.S. 11 May] 1905 – 21 February 1984) was a 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 in his most famous novel, And Quiet Flows the Don.

Early life and education

Sholokhov was born in the Russian Empire, in the "land of the Cossacks" – the Kruzhilin hamlet, part of stanitsa Vyoshenskaya, in the former Administrative Region of the Don Cossack Host. His father, a Russian, Aleksander Mikhailovich Sholokhov (1865–1925), was a member of the lower middle class, at various times a farmer, a cattle trader, and a 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 time in her life when she wanted to correspond with her son. His family were not Don Cossacks, but inogorodnye ("outlanders"), the rather disparaging term used by the Don Cossacks for outsiders who settled in their territory by the banks of the Don. The inogorodnye tended to be much poorer than the Don Cossacks and were excluded from voting for officials in the Host government (the Don Cossack Host were allowed to elect their leaders, except for the ataman who headed the Host, who was always appointed by the Emperor).

Sholokhov attended schools in Karginskaya, 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.