Sholokhov, Mikhail

Sholokhov, Mikhail (Aleksandrovich)

(born May 24, 1905, Veshenskaya, Russia—died Feb. 21, 1984, Veshenskaya, U.S.S.R.) Russian novelist. A native of the Don River region, he served in the Red Army and joined the Communist Party in 1932. He is best known for the huge novel The Quiet Don, translated in two parts as And Quiet Flows the Don (1934) and The Don Flows Home to the Sea (1940). A portrayal of the struggle between the Cossacks and Bolsheviks, it was heralded in the Soviet Union as a powerful example of Socialist Realism and became the most widely read novel in Russia. It became controversial when Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and others alleged that it was plagiarized from the Cossack writer Fyodor Kryukov (d. 1920). Sholokhov's later novels include Virgin Soil Upturned (1932–60). He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1965.