A huge literature is devoted to M. A. Sholokhov's novel "The Quiet Don". The first monographs about him appeared before the Great Patriotic War, and critical articles-in the late 20s. There is no need to evaluate various interpretations of the famous novel. Researchers focused most of their attention on literary problems. But for almost four decades since the end of the Sholokhov epic, relatively few special (applied, reference, textual and factual) developments of the "Quiet Don" have appeared. This essay focuses on the historical background of the Quiet Don.

The creative history of the novel has already been considered in a number of studies1, which are built in purely philological terms. Specific historical facts are given a secondary place in them. There are, however, a number of special studies (or sections in them) concerning the actual material used in the novel. Serious in content is the article by V. G. Vasilyev 2, which was later included in the monograph of the same author. It correctly identifies a number of sources from which the novelist drew factual material. Thus, by means of textual analysis, it was established that Sholokhov used the data of G. Zakharyants's pamphlet3 and the correspondence of the newspaper "Our Banner"4 to describe the battles in December 1917 near Rostov . F.'s expedition Podtelkova on the Upper Don is described based on the journalistic works of D. Delert and A. A. Frenkel5 . The events of the Kornilov revolt are described using the memoirs of General A. S. Lukomsky .6 The description of the" election " of Don ataman Krasnov in May 1918 was made using Krasnov's memoirs .7 It is established that the scenes of the White Guard " ice campaign "(January-February 1918) were written using factual material from the memoirs of General A. I. Denikin8 . This and many other printed publications appeared, of course, even before the corresponding chapters of the Quiet Don were written. Similarly, some White Guard materials were published (partly in excerpts) in the Soviet press of the 1920s9 . Among the works on this topic is an interesting article about the use of Cossack folk songs in Sholokhov's epic 10 . A number of useful information, factual and textual observations can be found in the article dedicated specifically to the history of the creation of the "Quiet Don" 11 .

1 I. Lezhnev. The Way of Sholokhov, Moscow, 1958; F. Abramov, V. Gura, M. A. Sholokhov. Seminary. L. 1958; V. Petelin. Humanism of Sholokhov, M. 1965; L. Yakimenko. Creativity of M. A. Sholokhov, Moscow, 1970; A. Khvatov. Khudozhestvenny mir Sholokhov, Moscow, 1970, et al.

2 V. G. Vasiliev. Historical truth in M. Sholokhov's" Quiet Don". "Scientific Notes" of Magnitogorsk Pedagogical Institute, vol. IV, 1957.

3 City Of Zakharyants. Organization of the Red Guard in Rostov. "Proletarian Revolution on the Don". Sat. II. Rostov-on-Don. 1922.

4 "Our Banner", 29. XII. 1917 (the author mistakenly indicated September 29).

5 Dan Delert. The Don is on fire. Rostov-on-Don. 1927; A. A. Frenkel. Eagles of the Revolution. Russian Vendee. Rostov-on-Don. 1920.

6 A. S. Lukomsky. From my memories. Archive of the Russian Revolution (Berlin). Vol. V. 1922.

7 P. N. Krasnov. The all-great Don army. "Archive of the Russian Revolution", Vol. V; see also the Soviet edition: P. N. Krasnov. On the Inner Front, L. 1927.

8 A. I. Denikin. Essays on the Russian Troubles, vol. II. Paris. 1922.

9 See, for example, Denikin, Yudenich, Wrangel. Memoirs. M.-L. 1927.

10 K. I. Pakhomova. Folk song in M. Sholokhov's novel "The Quiet Don". "Scientific Notes" of Gorky University, vyi. 49, 1958.

11 V. A. Apukhtina. From the creative history of M. Sholokhov's novel "The Quiet Don". Vestnik Moskovskogo universiteta, seriya sotsial'nykh nauk, 1954, No. 1.

page 127

"Quiet Don" itself is not overloaded with quoting documentary sources. But they do occur, and precisely in those chapters that deal with large-scale events. Sholokhov's method of quoting documents is characteristic: he often cites them not in excerpts or extracts, but in full, even with clerical notes. Almost all the documents given in "Quiet Don" were published before the corresponding parts of the novel were written. For example, Sholokhovsky Bunchuk quotes V. I. Lenin's article "The Situation and Tasks of the Socialist International", and this article was published in the first edition of Lenin's Works in 192412. General Kornilov's "appeal" of August 25 (September 7), 1917, was published repeatedly in the first decade of Soviet power, as were other documents of the Kornilov revolt. Part 5 of the novel, published in the magazine "October" in 1928, contains the full text of the verdict of the White Cossack trial of Podtyolkov and his comrades, published in the White Guard newspapers in the summer of 1918 and reproduced in the same year in the Soviet pamphlet13, etc.

Some of the documents Sholokhov apparently took directly from the press. This is the letter of Ataman Krasnov to Kaiser Wilhelm II dated June 11, 1918. It was secret, because the ataman's fawning over the German occupiers was too humiliating. However, the secret didn't last long. When, in the summer of 1918, the White Guard Volunteer Army became stronger in the Kuban, which, in contrast to Krasnov's "Don government", was oriented towards the Entente and also wanted to subdue the White Cossack army, Krasnov's letter, which became famous in Yekaterinodar (the" capital " of Denikin's people), was published in the local press. This document was also made public in the Soviet press, but later than the corresponding chapters of the third book of the Quiet Don were published .14
Sholokhov rarely and sparingly talks about working on his own works. However, in the process of publishing "Quiet Don", he made one significant statement: "The work on collecting material for "Quiet Don" was carried out along two lines: first, collecting memories, stories, facts, details from living participants of the imperialist and civil wars, conversations, inquiries, checking their plans and ideas; second, painstaking study of specially military literature, disassembly of military operations, numerous reports, etc. memoirs, familiarization with foreign, even White Guard sources " 15 . This is especially noticeable in the case of such facts as the description of the course of the Battle of Galicia on the Russian-Austrian front (August-September 1914) and the Kornilov revolt (August-September 1917). Both of these subjects had already been published in the second half of the 1920s in a wide and diverse literature, both Soviet and foreign (and not only emigrant). It can be argued that the general outline of events, the line of conduct of the main actors, and many documents (appeals, appeals, directives, etc.) have already been described and published to a certain extent, although without the proper depth and degree of development. For example, Sholokhov could find abundant factual material about the course of the Kornilov adventure in a number of Soviet studies and publications, 16 as well as in a variety of newspaper and magazine materials of various kinds. Therefore, the presence in the novel of a series of details and interesting details is quite understandable.

The author's picture of the Battle of Galicia is even more detailed: the numbers and names of armies, corps and divisions, and even some units and divisions in the text are very full, as are the names of military leaders. When writing the relevant chapters, the author also had something to rely on. The brilliant victory of Russian weapons in Galicia at the very beginning of the First World War caused close attention and at the same time gave rise to an extensive literature - scientific, journalistic, memoir. And in the Soviet historiography, by the second half of the 20s, he had already appeared-

12 V. I. Lenin. Collected Works, Ed. 1-E. T. XIII.

13 See A. A. Frenkel. Eagles of the Revolution. Tsaritsyn. 1918; in 1920, this pamphlet was reprinted in Rostov-on-Don.

14 "Red Archive", 1934, vol. 67.

15 "Komsomolskaya Pravda", 17. VIII. 1934.

16 V. Vladimirova. Counterrevolution In 1 1917 Moscow, 1924; E. I. Martynov. Kornilov, L. 1927, et al.

page 128

There are a number of studies on this topic that have not lost some of their significance to this day17 .

In the literature (we will limit ourselves here to the one that can be called battle), it is relatively easier to describe events of a strategic order. This is understandable: the higher the level, the more prominent both the characters and the actions themselves. It is much more difficult to reproduce the" microcosm " of reality. This requires very specific, very specific knowledge. They are achieved by painstaking research of various properties: working with archival documents, memoirs and other written sources, collecting stories of eyewitnesses and participants of events. It is noteworthy that in the process of the author's description of the world and civil Wars, the characters of "Quiet Don" usually act in the "microcosm". This is where the most interesting part of Sholokhov's portrayal of real historical reality comes in.

...Grigory Melekhov, after being called up for active service, was enlisted in the 12th Don Cossack Regiment. This happened, as can be judged from the circumstances of the action, in January 1914. In the novel podjesaul Polkovnikov is named the hundred-year-old commander of Grigory. He also signed a letter to Pantelei Prokofievich about the alleged death of Grigory (in fact, he was only wounded). Polkovnikov, the character in "Quiet Don" is purely episodic, there is a very real person, and in his own way known. G. P. Polkovnikov's service record has been preserved in the Central Military Academy, from which it is clear that from the beginning of 1914, he served as a hundred-year commander in the 12th Don Regiment with the rank of esaul, and from July of the same year - in the headquarters of the 11th Cavalry Division.His further fate is interesting: in 1917, already in the rank of colonel, he was appointed commander-in-Chief of the Petrograd Military District by the Provisional Government and turned out to be the last protege of the pre-October regime in this post, and in March 1918 he was shot on the Don by the verdict of the Revolutionary Tribunal 19 .

At the beginning of the First World War, the regiment in which G. Melekhov served, according to the novel when describing the fighting, was part of the 11th cavalry division. Here, too, everything is accurate: the 11th Cavalry division included the 12th Don Regiment 20, and the named division was part of the 3rd Army (Commander General P. V. Ruzsky), which occupied Lviv during the Battle of Galicia. In the same chapters, when describing the battles at Brody, it is mentioned (as is often the case with Sholokhov-it seems to be in passing, in passing, as something of little significance) neighbor of the 11th Division: "12th Cavalry Division under General Kaledin." Its commander was indeed A.M. Kaledin, one of the characters in the second book of the novel. The Don ataman, the head of the Cossack counter-revolution on the Don in 1917, Kaledin shot himself on January 29 (February 11), 1918 in Novocherkassk. The scene of his suicide is described in the fifth part of the novel. In the same chapters, Colonel Kaledin, commander of the 12th Don Regiment, is mentioned. According to archival data, this regiment in 1914 was indeed commanded by Colonel Kaledin 21 . In the dialogue Grigory heard, the colonel is called Vasily Maksimovich (the general's name was Alexey Maksimovich). So far, it has not been possible to establish whether the colonel was related to the future Don ataman; we do not know his further fate.

Grigory Melekhov received his first wound, as indicated in the novel, on August 15, 1914, in a battle near the town of Kamenka-Strumilo (now Kamenka-Bugskaya, 32 km northeast of Lviv). These temporal and geographical details are clarified from the letter of esaul Polkovnikov to Pantelei Prokofievich. In the actual description of the battle, no details of this kind are given: "The operation to capture the city began early in the morning", only added below: the 11th division participated in the offensive along with other formations. The use of military-historical literature not only confirms the fact of the mentioned battle, but also puts it in the general chain of events

17 "Strategic sketch of the War of 1914-1918", Vol. I. M. 1923; A. M. Zayonchkovsky. World War 1914-1918 General strategic essay, vol. I. M. 1925; "Lutsk Breakthrough". Trudy I materialy k operatsii Yugo-Zapadnogo fronta v May - June 1916 goda [Works and materials for the operations of the South-Western Front in May-June 1916].

18 CVIA, accounting and reference materials.

19 "Soviet Historical Encyclopedia", vol. 11, 1968, stb. 279.

20 TSGVIA, f. 3521, op. 1, dd. 50, 166.

21 Ibid., f. 5066, op. 1, d. 2, ll. 10-12.

page 129

The Battle of Galicia. It was from 13 to 21 September that parts of the 3rd and 8th Russian armies conducted a successful offensive in the direction of Przemysl. The 11th Cavalry division operated until September 18 north of Lviv, moving towards Rava-Russkaya 22 , that is, at the exact time and in the places where the main character of "Quiet Don"was wounded.

Sholokhov carefully monitors the geographical and even topographical signs of the place of action. They're just as accurate as his factography, though it's not immediately obvious. It is natural, organic, and that is why it seems to be invisible, mirroring the measured flow of life. So in December 1913 (the date set by us according to the circumstances of the action), Grigory is called to the village of Veshenskaya and handed a notice to appear on the second day of Christmas (that is, December 26 of the Old Art.) at the assembly point in the settlement of Malkovo, because there is a call to the army. This settlement is located near the busy Voronezh-Rostov railway. This road already existed at the time described. Naturally, the gathering of conscripts was scheduled at the same point. On steppe roads, the distance from Veshenskaya to Malkov is about 120 kilometers 23 . These topographical details are not included in the novel. But the circumstances of place and time are embedded in the fabric of the narrative with the usual internal logic for Sholokhov. Here Pantelei Prokofievich and Grigory are leaving: "We made seventy versts in a day. On the next day (lights were already being lit in the houses), we arrived at the Malkovo settlement." So, for a full day's journey - 70 versts, for the second - an incomplete one (since we arrived in the evening, the lights were just turned on in the houses, so total darkness did not come, and we are talking about the beginning of January) - we made less, about 50 versts.

At the end of 1916, Grigory recalls the battle episodes of his military biography. Among others, this one: "In May, the regiment, along with the rest of the Brusilov army, broke through the front at Lutsk." The year is not named, but it is well known that the offensive of the South-Western Front (the famous Brusilovsky breakthrough) lasted from May 22 to August 13 (St. Petersburg), 1916. It is noteworthy here to indicate the time - "in May". According to the Central Military Academy, the 12th Don Cossack Regiment fought as part of this front from May 25 to June 12, 24 . The exact location is also indicated: Lutsk was taken by Russian troops on May 25.

Esaul Listnitsky, before the February Revolution, fled from his regiment, fearing the revenge of the Cossacks. Later, he was assigned to the 14th Don Cossack Regiment, where he arrived, as can be established from the text, around the beginning of May 1917 (the regiment left Dvinsk on July 3, and before that, as the novel says, Listnitsky spent "about two months" there). The regiment's commander, Colonel Bykodarov, is also named. He is mentioned only once, but this is a real historical person. In the lists of staff and chief officers of the regiment dated July 25, 1916, Colonel Ivan Fyodorovich Bykodarov is listed as its commander . He was still in this position at the time of Listnitsky's appearance: his order as commander of the 14th regiment of April 30, 191726 was preserved .

At the beginning of July 1917, another political crisis broke out in Petrograd. After the July events, the reaction went on the offensive. One of the manifestations of this was the call to the capital of "reliable" units, mainly Cossacks. There was also the 14th Don Regiment. In "Quiet of the Don" we read: "The third - the order:" Do not hesitate for a minute - to move." The echelons of the regiment moved to Petrograd. On the seventh of July, the hooves of Cossack horses were already clattering along the streets of the capital dressed in end scales." Indeed, the 14th Regiment arrived in Petrograd on July 6, 27 . The personnel had to be placed in the barracks. Naturally, the patrol service did not start until the next day. Guards from this regiment, as described in the novel, patrolled on pet-

22 A. Beloy. The Battle of Galicia, Moscow, 1929, pp. 329, 336-337. This study, where the course of the operation is considered in great detail, was published after the publication of the corresponding chapters of "Quiet of the Don", and these chapters in subsequent editions were not subjected to factual changes.

23 The distances hereafter are calculated by us according to the " Atlas of Highways of the USSR "(M. 1960), taking into account that in the steppe regions of the Upper Don, the directions of unpaved roads have not changed significantly over the past time.

24 TSGVIA, f. 5066, op. 1, d. 44, ll. 1 ob., 17.

25 Ibid., f. 5068, op. 1, d. 89, l. 1.

26 Ibid., 77, p. 139.

27 O. N. Znamensky. The July Crisis of 1917, Moscow, l. 1964, p. 117.

page 130

rograd streets. Among other Cossack units stationed in the summer of 1917 in the capital, the 1st and 4th regiments were named in the "Quiet Don", which is also reliable. Later in the novel it is told how in the" last days of October " Listnitsky's hundred guarded the Winter Palace. This refers to the events of October 25, 1917. In the "Quiet Don" it is said that there were three hundred Cossacks in total, they came on foot, without horses, and left Winter late in the evening. It is established that on that memorable day there were about 300 Cossacks in the Winter Camp until 22 o'clock, who then left it on 28 .

Among the minor characters of "Quiet Don", a rather noticeable figure is the centurion Izvarin. At the crucial time of the end of 1917-beginning of 1918, he was in the same regiment with Grigory (in the 2nd reserve). Young, energetic, intelligent, able to persuade and argue temperamentally, he belonged to the number of ardent Don autonomists. For a while, he had a strong influence on Grigory, painting before him Manilovsky pictures of the future life of the "free Don republic", which would become a great power "independent of Moscow". The ambitious talker Izvarin is also a very real historical person. In the novel, he is presented with considerable biographical details: "Yefim Izvarin was the son of a well-to-do Cossack of the Gundorovskaya stanitsa" (a characteristic sign of the social origin of the ideologist of autonomy: from the rich and also" lower", that is, the most conservative and class-closed strata of the Don Cossacks); "he received his education at the Novocherkassk Cadet School, after which he went to the front in the 10th Don Cossack Regiment," and so on. Indeed, in the surviving documents of this regiment, Izvarin is mentioned in orders from January 23 to June 9 (art. art.), 1917.29, Grigory met Izvarin in the second half of 1917, already in the reserve regiment. As can be judged from fragmentary information, the real Izvarin made a career on the White Guard Don, became a member of the Krasnovsky " Military Circle "in 1918 from the Cherkassk," Nizovsky " district , 30 received the rank of podesaul (captain), wrote in White Guard newspapers, his name is also mentioned in memoir literature .31
The novel describes in detail the political situation on the Don in the winter and spring of 1918. Among the actors are atamans Kaledin and Krasnov, Generals Kornilov, Alekseev, Denikin, leaders of the revolutionary Cossacks Podtelkov and Krivoshlykov, and many other historical characters. The actual material here is mostly drawn from the author's writings that appeared even before the completion of the fifth part of the novel. 32 So, in the "Quiet Don" the congress of front-line Cossacks in the village of Kamenskaya (now Kamensk-Shakhtinsky) is described in detail. This was a very important political event in the life of the region: the Bolshevik Party and the working class led the bulk of the Don's working Cossacks. It was no accident that the congress was called specifically for front-line soldiers, that is, participants in the imperialist war: they were not only the most politically experienced people in their midst, but also the most socially active. It was on them that the Bolshevik party relied among the Cossack population (in the novel there is a brief and accurate remark about the political mood in the villages after the Great October: "the old people did not get along with the front-line soldiers"). The Congress was convened on January 10 (23), 1918, on the initiative of the Bolshevik Military Revolutionary Committee, which was then in Voronezh, because Ataman Kaledin was still holding out on the Don and the counter-revolutionary officers were in charge of everything. The Congress adopted Bolshevik resolutions and sent delegates to the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets, and the next day a grand rally was held in Kamenskaya, where up to 50 thousand people gathered. The resolution of the meeting fully approved the political line of the congress that ended .33 The Party attached great importance to revolutionary work among the Cossacks.

28 I. I. Mints. Istoriya Velikogo Oktyabrya [History of the Great October], Vol. II, Moscow, 1968, pp. 1029, 1085

29 TSGVIA. f. 5064. op. 1, d. 39, l. 21; d. 38, l. 29 ob.

30 TsGAOR of the USSR, accounting data of the reference department.

31 I. Kalinin. Russkaya Vendeya [Russian Vendee], Moscow, 1926, p. 180.

32 "The Proletarian Revolution on the Don", Moscow, L. 1924; V. A. Antonov-Ovseenko. Notes on the Civil War, vol. 1, Moscow, 1924; N. L. Yanchevsky. Civil struggle in the North Caucasus. Tt. I-II. Rostov-on-Don. 1927.

33 M. I. Korchin. Don Cossacks (from the past). Rostov-on-Don 1949 p. 100.

page 131

On arrival in Petrograd for the Congress of Soviets, the Don delegation was received on January 16 (29) by V. I. Lenin .34
Sholokhov brings Grigory Melekhov, Kotlyarov and Khrisanf Tokin to the congress in Kamenskaya. Through episodes with their participation, abundant factual material of a historical nature is presented. For example, the names of the Bolsheviks Shchadenko and Mandelstam "from Moscow"are mentioned. Indeed, the congress was actively attended by the head of the Kamensk Bolshevik organization, E. A. Shchadenko, one of the future heroes of the 1st Cavalry Army. Doctor A. V. Mandelstam, one of the members of the Bolshevik delegation that came from Voronezh, was a prominent figure at the congress .35 A later memoirist tells how Mandelstam "began to talk about government measures to free the Cossacks from certain official bondage, about equipping the Cossacks undergoing military training at the expense of the state." In the audience, the memoirist continues, his speech caused a negative reaction among some Cossacks: "You can't buy us... We are not sold to Jews! - Also, apparently, the power! There was no Russian there to send to the Don? - There they have, read, one Russian Lenin, the rest... " 36 . The memoirs convey the feeling of distrust of some ordinary Cossacks towards "strangers"," newcomers", especially Jews, because anti-Semitic sentiments were strongly spread among the Cossacks. As is well known, persons of the Jewish faith were forbidden to settle in the Don Region from 1880 until 1917. Or here is another episode of the novel: in the evening after the congress closed, Hristonya "went with the Cossacks to arrest the Kamensk authorities "( meaning supporters of ataman Kaledin), returned to the apartment at night, having received a "gunshot scratch above the forehead", and explained: "It was me, then, that the military chief skobelnul from the revolver. They came to him, as guests, from the front door, and he conceived to defend himself. Isho wounded one Cossack." And so it was. According to the same memoirist, on the evening of January 10, 250 officers were arrested in Kamenskaya, and "the head of the local military team, military sergeant Astakhov," fired a revolver through the door and wounded a Cossack ataman. 37 Recall that Hristonya is a former ataman.

Fierce battles in the western part of the Don region in January 1918 are also described in detail in the novel: the offensive of the White Guard detachment of Esaul Chernetsov, the capture of Kamenskaya, the mobilization of the red Cossacks, their counteroffensive, the battle near the village of Glubokaya (now Glubokaya). All this was covered in detail in the local periodical press of that time .38 It is very likely that Sholokhov used these sources. The scene with the Chernetsov prisoners, which he wrote extremely strongly, also has a precise historical background .39 The tragic epic of Fyodor Podtelkov is also described in detail in "Quiet of the Don". It has already been said that the main source for the author was a pamphlet by A. A. Frenkel; its author was a participant in the events, and he managed to escape from death.

The collapse and internal disintegration of Krasnov's White Cossack army at the end of 1918 are described in some detail in the Quiet of the Don. This general process, caused by the most acute social contradictions, is shown by the example of the 28th regiment, in which the cornet Pyotr Melekhov served as a hundred-year commander. Indeed, this regiment was one of the first in the Krasnov army to rebel against the counter-revolutionary officers and leave the front in full force. The Soviet press wrote a lot about this in January 1918: "The 28th regiment revolted, it was supported by the 32nd and 34th; the 2nd regiment went to the rear. Revolutionary committees are being created in Cossack units"; "according to the report of the delegate from the Cossacks, who went over to the Reds, the 28th regiment abandoned its positions and returned to Veshenskaya... The delegates of the 28th regiment went to other regiments, as a result, the 32nd, 33rd and Mashkovsky regiments left their positions."40 Episode when the Cossacks of the 28th floor-

34 See V. I. Lenin, PSS. vol. 35, p. 573; see also " Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Biographical chronicle", vol. 5, Moscow, 1974, p. 210.

35 Yu. K. Kiriyenko The Collapse of the Kaledin region, Moscow, 1976, pp. 177, 179.

36 S. I. Kudinov. You won't forget that. Memories. Rostov-on-Don. 1957, p. 59.

37 Ibid., p. 63.

38 "Chronicle of historical events in the Don, Kuban and Black Sea region". Issue 1: March 1917-March 1918. Rostov-on-Don. 1939, p. 127 el.

39 S. I. Kudinov. Op. ed., p. 95.

40 Pravda, 3. II. 1919; Izvestiya VTsIK, 26. I. 1919.

page 132

ka, who left the front, gathered in Veshenskaya for a revolutionary rally, is expressively described in the novel through the perception of Peter Melekhov. It happened in the middle of January 1919 (present day). A few days later, Red Army units occupied the Upper Don Region. On February 8, the newspaper Pravda reported on the occupation of the entire upper reaches of the Don River to the village of Ust-Medveditskaya. Grigory and Pyotr Melekhov, abandoning the disintegrated Krasnov army, remained at home in the Tatarsky farm. The Cossacks are tensely awaiting the arrival of the Reds. And here: "At noon, the 6th Mtsensk Red Banner Regiment marched through the farm in a hurry." From the documents of the Central State Aviation Administration, it is clear that just in January 1919, the 6th Soviet Mtsensk Rifle Regiment participated in battles against the White Cossacks on the Upper Don, and precisely in the Veshenskaya area. It was part of the 1st Brigade of the 15th Inzen Rifle Division 41 .

Soon Miron Korshunov and several other well-to-do Cossacks were arrested in Tatarsky. They were sent to Vyoshenskaya, where, as stated in the novel, the revolutionary tribunal of the Inzen division was then located. This event occurred, as it was possible to establish by textual analysis, in February 1919. From the materials of the same archive, it is clear that in January - February 1919, the Inzen division led a rapid offensive from the Voronezh Province to the south, between the Bityug and Khopr rivers, and, after crossing the Don, went further to the Seversky Donets. It was established that the division headquarters from 9 to 16 February 1919 was located in Vyoshenskaya. Obviously, the divisional tribunal as a division of the headquarters was located in the same place 42 .

In the event line of the novel, an important place is occupied by the story of the Vyoshensky White Cossack uprising, which lasted from the beginning of March to the beginning of June 1919 - a period not so long for an epic that embraces 10 years of an incredibly dramatic era. However, the description of events related in one way or another to the course of this uprising covered in the novel a large area of the sixth part and half of the seventh, which together makes up 23% of the text of the entire novel. This is not surprising. The circumstances of the Vyoshensky uprising played a huge role in the fate of all the main characters of "Quiet Don". A tragic turn took place in Grigory's life - he broke with the Soviet government and shed the blood of the working people of Russia; his civil and political path went astray; the same thing happened in personal terms: his wife died in agony, and his children were orphaned... Pyotr Melekhov, Kotlyarov, Shtokman are dying in the merciless civil war, and many of Grigory's friends and fellow farmers have died.

During the civil war, the counter-revolution repeatedly raised uprisings against the Soviet state. The social base of these movements was often the well-to-do strata of the peasantry, and sometimes not so well-to-do, when the kulaks managed for a while to attract a part of the middle peasantry with them. The largest such revolts were the Makhnovist and Grigorievist revolts in Ukraine, then the Antonovist revolts in Central Russia, and the West Siberian and Kronstadt riots of 1921. All these petty-bourgeois actions have received coverage in the scientific literature .43 To this day, however, the Vyoshensk Uprising has not been reflected in any detailed special study .44 While working on the relevant chapters of the novel, Sholokhov was forced to note:: "The difficulty is also that in the third book I give an account of the Vyoshensky Uprising, which has not yet been covered in the literature." 45 That's right. By 1930, there were only 2 published works with a brief description of those events. First of all, the two-volume generalizing study of the military historian N. E. Kakurin "How the Revolution Fought", published in 1925. In the young Soviet historiography, this was the first major work on the history of military operations on the fronts of the civil War. We should pay tribute to the author, a former general staff officer of the old army, who created an interesting and original work that has not lost its significance to this day. However, a generalizing work on such a broad topic could not but contain gaps and omissions. When publishing the third book of the Quiet Don (more precisely, the chapters devoted to the Vyoshensky Uprising), Sholokhov

41 TSGASA, f. 100, op. 2, d. 246; f. 191, op. 3, dd. 70, 122, 123.

42 Ibid., f. 1250, op. 1, dd. 669, 674.

43 For the bibliography, see: D. L. Golinkov. The collapse of the anti-Soviet underground in the USSR (1917-1925). Moscow, 1975.

44 We have already written about this (Voprosy Istorii, 1976, No. 2, p. 161).

45 "On the Rise", 1930, N 6, p. 172.

page 133

I made a clarifying note, rightly disputing the accuracy of Kakurinsky data on the number of rebels, their weapons and the suppression of the rebellion .46 Even more sparse information was contained in the journalistic book of D. Kin 47 .

In the 1920s and partly in the 1930s, many White emigrant works on civil war themes appeared abroad, mainly in Western Europe. Imbued, as a rule, with an incredible hatred of everything Soviet, breathing class anger towards the state of the working people, these works, however, also represent a peculiar source. In particular, the "leaders" of the South Russian counter-revolution, Denikin, Krasnov, and Lukomsky, wrote extensive works with a number of interesting details. All of them, by the way, are actors of the "Quiet Don", performing there under their own names. But in the general's publications there was no place to describe the Vyoshensky uprising. This is understandable: the illiterate Rebel Cossacks did not leave any documents, and high-ranking memoirists were too little interested in the affairs of the "lower ranks". For example, in the most detailed of such works - in Denikin's memoir essays, among the most detailed descriptions of various actions and operations of the "classical", so to speak, White Guards, the Upper Don anti-Soviet rebellion is given only a few scattered paragraphs. True, having, obviously, the data of white intelligence, the general quite accurately identified the rebel armed forces: 30 thousand fighters and 6 guns 48 . Another thing is also characteristic: among the Vyoshensk rebels, as depicted in Sholokhov, there were only a few officers, and even those were, as they say, "black bone". It is clear that they were not very good at writing memoirs, and then, as fate would have it, they found themselves in exile. Of these, only the nominal head of the rebels, cornet Pavel Kudinov, left memoirs 49 . They are of some interest, but they were published after the corresponding chapters of the Quiet Don were completed and submitted for publication .50
Thus, when writing one of the most important sections of "Quiet of the Don", its author could rely only on a small number of published materials, moreover, not indisputably reliable. In fact, he himself had to recreate the tragedy of tens of thousands of people who were provocatively involved in an anti-national adventure. How did Sholokhov solve his problem? In one of the last conversations with journalists, he gave the following answer: "It must be borne in mind that I was formed and my adolescence was spent in the midst of the civil war. The topic was on the eyes, a topic for stories, essays. It was a tragic era... The adolescent look is the most inquisitive look in a person. He sees everything, notices everything, learns everything, goes everywhere. It was easy for me when it came to the actual material. Difficulties came later, when it was necessary to write and know the history of the civil war. Here it was already necessary to sit in the archives, study the memoir literature. And not only ours, but also the emigrant one... Then you will get acquainted with the Cossacks who participated in this war. My very profession before writing - teacher, statistician, food worker-introduced me to a huge number of people... Conversations, memories of the participants-this was the backbone. And the domestic side, it was also observed, because I lived in different farms. " 51
This short story exhaustively reflects Sholokhov's methods of working on the novel's material. Undoubtedly, the historical accuracy is partly due to the painstaking work with memoirs and archival materials. But it is only partly so, for here it is necessary to emphasize something else: the novel contains information that could not have been drawn from any written source at all. Dispositions of chalk-

46 "October", 1932, N 7, p. 11.

47 d. To in. Denikinschina, L. 1927.

48 A. I. Denikin. Op. op. vol. VI. Paris, 1925, p. 78.

49 "Free Cossacks", Paris, 1931, NN 77-85; 1932, N 101.

50 The first excerpt from the sixth part of The Quiet of the Don was published on December 28, 1928 in the Rostov newspaper Molot, and the opening chapters were published in the magazine Oktyabr (1929. NN 1 - 3). The entire manuscript was submitted to the same journal in the spring of 1931, but Rappov's figures slowed down the publication. On June 6, 1931, Sholokhov reported this to M. Gorky, who turned to A. Fadeev for assistance. The text of the sixth part was published in October 1932 (NN 1-8, 10).

51 "Literaturnaya Rossiya", 23. V. 19-75.

page 134

the names and titles of their commanders, dates and details of the battles, and much more could hardly be reflected in any documents: the rebels, mostly illiterate Cossacks, did not know how and did not want to write documents (this, by the way, is shown by Sholokhov on the example of correspondence between Grigory Melekhov and Kudinov; in any regular army, such disregard for the order form is simply unthinkable to imagine). The writer once interviewed many witnesses and participants of the civil war on the Don. These witnesses may even have included prominent leaders of the rebellion. The literary critic I. Lezhnyov reported (apparently from the words of Sholokhov himself )that in 1923, over 3 thousand former White Guards, including many officers, returned to the Veshensky district under an amnesty. 52 Sholokhov was not only an eyewitness to the events described, but also - and this is especially important-a fellow countryman of his heroes. He lived their lives, and to some of them He was their flesh of flesh and bone of bone. The thousand-word rumor of the world stirred up by the revolution brought him facts and information that the archives and libraries of the whole world could not compete with. This is especially true for the chapters devoted to the tragic events of the Vyoshensk Rebellion.

What are the reasons for this tragic event? In the spring of 1931, Rapp figures, delaying the publication of the sixth part of The Quiet of the Don, accused the author of a "Kulak bias". Sholokhov, turning to M. Gorky for assistance, wrote to him: "Part 6 is almost entirely devoted to the Upper Don uprising in 1919. ...Now a few remarks about the uprising. 1. It arose as a result of excesses in relation to the middle Cossack. 2. This circumstance was taken advantage of by Denikin's emissaries, who worked in the Upper Don district and turned various insurgent outbreaks into a general organized action. Moreover, it is characteristic that nonresidents, who were before, in fact, the mainstay of the Soviet government on the Don, in the overwhelming majority fought on the side of the rebels, creating their own so-called "Nonresident squads", and fought more fiercely, and therefore better than the Rebel Cossacks... The most powerful economically elite of the village and farm - merchants, priests, millers got off with a monetary contribution, and the Cossacks, often from the lower social stratum, went under the bullet. And it is natural that such a policy, pursued by some representatives of the Soviet government, sometimes even notorious enemies, was interpreted as a desire to destroy not the classes, but the Cossacks. " 53
In this letter, Sholokhov acts as a historian, because the political and social circumstances mentioned by him are reflected in the novel in an artistic and figurative form. Almost 30 years later, when many documents were discovered and studied, in the collective work of Soviet military historians, the causes of the mutiny were determined in principle in the same way as in Sholokhov's letter: "The Vyoshensky mutiny was a manifestation of the fluctuations experienced by the labor Cossacks at that time. The mutiny was also caused by serious mistakes made by local Soviet authorities in the winter of 1918-19... Often, not only the Cossack elite, but also the labor Cossacks came under attack. In addition to the counter - revolutionary part of the Cossacks, labor Cossacks were often evicted from their farms and villages. Numerous arrests were made, the very word "Cossack" was banished from everyday life, and so on. " 54 Both the assessment of the latest Soviet historiography and Sholokhov's letter speak about the notorious policy of" telling stories", which played a harmful role in the process of the civil war in Southern Russia. Responsibility for these actions falls on the" left " deviators, who equated the kulak with the working peasant and insisted on the unlimited implementation of harsh punitive measures that were not caused by political or military necessity.

Many documents have been preserved confirming that random people with non-Soviet sentiments participated in such actions. Just on the eve of the uprising, around March 10, 1919, the commander of the 1st rifle brigade of the 10th army reported on the incidents in the village of Atamanskaya as follows: "When I went around the camp itself-

52 I. Lezhnev. Op. ed., p. 256.

53 "Literary Heritage", vol. 70, 1963, p. 695.

54 "History of the Civil War in the USSR", vol. 4, Moscow, 1959, pp. 91-92.

page 135

you can see that all the shops were looted, everything was destroyed in empty houses and a lot of broken glass... Residents of the village, seeing order in the brigade entrusted to me, which was marching in columns with songs, I began to receive complaints about the brigade standing there earlier, whose people were engaged in looting for two days." The brigade commander asked the army command to punish the perpetrators, because such facts could lead to "grave consequences for all the conquests of the working people." 55 Such cases were a rare exception, because discipline in Soviet units was observed to the highest degree strictly, and the measures applied to violators were the most severe. Io in this case, we are talking, perhaps, about deliberate connivance, about serious mistakes or about stupidity. On June 3, 1919, Lenin was forced to send the following telegram to the Revolutionary Military Council of the Southern Front: "The Revolutionary Committee of the Kotelnikovsky district of the Don region, by Order 27, abolishes the name "stanitsa", establishing the name "volost", according to which it divides the Kotelnikovsky district into volosts. In different districts of the region, local authorities are prohibited from wearing stripes and the word "Cossack"is abolished. In the 9th army of T. Rogachev commandeered indiscriminately from the labor Cossacks horse harness with carts. In many places of the region, local peasant fairs are prohibited. In the village, Austrian prisoners of war are appointed commissars. We draw your attention to the need to be especially careful in breaking down such everyday trifles, which are completely irrelevant in the general policy and at the same time irritate the population. Keep a firm course in the main issues and meet them halfway, make allowances for the archaic remnants that are familiar to the population. " 56
In "Quiet of the Don" neither directly nor indirectly does not give the date of the beginning of the Vyoshensk rebellion. But due to a number of circumstances, it can be established that the action takes place before the beginning of March (in the corresponding chapters of the novel, the time is given according to the old calendar). Documents of the headquarters of the Southern Front call March 10-11, 1919, and the center of the mutiny is indicated by the village of Elanskaya 57 . In Sholokhov's last detail is reflected: an old Cossack who rode to the Rybny farm, where Grigory is hiding, shouts: "The entire Yelansky yurt has risen from small to large. In Vyoshenskaya, the Reds were kicked out." The sequence of enumeration here is not accidental: first the Elans rebelled, and then the Vyoshentsy (the rebellion was named after the last village because later it was there that the rebel headquarters was located). By that time, the Red Army's offensive had stopped at the turn of the Seversky Donets, in the Kamenskaya-Belaya Kalitva 58 area . In a straight line, it is only about 180 km to Vyoshenskaya. In other words, the mutiny took place in the immediate rear of the red front. The extremely dangerous consequences of this circumstance are obvious. The rebel forces were considerable in terms of the scale of the civil war and at the beginning of April amounted to 30 thousand people, mainly cavalry, as well as 6 guns and 27 machine guns .59 The "Quiet Don" provides approximately similar information: 25 thousand mounted and 10 thousand foot soldiers, 6 artillery batteries, about 150 machine guns. The difference in the calculation of military equipment should not be alarming: the rebels had an extremely limited amount of ammunition, so most of their guns and machine guns were inactive for this reason (as the heroes of "Quiet Don" say more than once), and red intelligence detected, of course, first of all active military equipment.

The novel gives a detailed deployment of the rebel troops for April 1919, that is, during the period of their greatest initial successes; they occupied the territory from the upper reaches of the Chir to the lower reaches of the Medveditsa, in the north along the line of the villages of Slashchevskaya-Shumilinskaya, in the west along the Kazanskaya - Mashkovskaya line. Sholokhov writes that the rebel front line was 400 versts in circumference. In the archives of detailed data on the deployment of the rebels could not be found. In the later memoirs of Marshal of the Soviet Union K. A. Meretskov, a participant in the civil War on the Don, information is given about the mutiny of the Veshenskaya, Kazan, Migulinskaya, Elanskaya and Ust - Khoperskaya stanitsas supported by the Cossacks of the farms of Napoleon-

55 TSGASA, f. 100, op. 3, d. 99, l. 10.

56 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 50, p. 387; see also ibid., p. 480.

57 TSGASA, f. 100, op. 3, d. 100, l. 16.

58 "History of the Civil War in the USSR", vol. 3, p. 344.

59 TSASA, f. 192, op. 3, d. 162.

page 136

va, Astakhova, Shumilina and Solonkov 60 . D. Kin's book states that the mutiny covered an area of 10 thousand square kilometers and stretched from the village of Ust-Medveditskaya (now the town of Serafimovich) to Boguchar 61 . The same data is given in the "History of the Civil War". In general, these data coincide with those that are available in the novel, although the writer has much more detailed and accurate information. Obviously, Sholokhov was relying on some local sources available only to him.

The Soviet command immediately took measures to suppress the mutiny, but they were far from simple. The bulk of the rebels were experienced in military affairs Cossacks. With the skills of professional soldiers, they quickly organized themselves into hundreds, regiments, and even divisions, although their organization was shaky and unstable. The commanders of these formations were junior officers or experienced non-commissioned officers of the old army. Thus, the rebel divisions were commanded by cornet P. Kudinov and G. Bogatyrev, sub-cornet K. Medvedev, and Sergeant Merkulov (all of them actors of the "Quiet Don"). In addition, at the time of the mutiny, its participants managed to capture many Red Army warehouses. In the telegram of the commander of the Southern Front V. M. In addition to hidden weapons, large and obviously counter-revolutionary villages contained warehouses of rifles, ammunition, and even machine guns in the form of ready-made arsenals for the insurgent Cossacks, huge transports from the rear with military supplies were sent to the front through counter-revolutionary villages without proper cover in the area of these villages, and a mass of captured Cossacks upon questioning them, the Shtadivs dispersed to their respective villages, where they could at any moment re-organize into their hundreds as ready-made fighters, with weapons at hand. " 62 Another document from the Yuzhfront headquarters on the same date reported that in Vyoshenskaya, Cossack insurgents captured 1,500 rifles and 3 guns, although without locks .63 This was happening almost all over the territory of the insurgency, and the rebels had enough small arms, and for the first time-and ammunition for them.

Red Army units at that time were engaged in heavy fighting with Denikin's forces north - east of Rostov, and reserve troops were sent to suppress the mutiny. So, in mid-March, the 8th Army sent two weak regiments, a battery and a cavalry division, as well as several marching companies to the uprising area, and the 9th Army sent the 5th Zaamursky Regiment in full strength .64 Later, new Red Army units were being pulled up to the area of the mutiny. They were united in the Expeditionary Forces under the command of T. S. Khvesin and in total consisted of two combined divisions of three-brigade composition 65, subordinated directly to the command of the Southern Front. Their number at the height of the fighting reached, according to the data given in the "Quiet Don", 20 thousand bayonets, and special work calls the figure of 14 thousand fighters 66 . For a long time, the fight against the rebels did not bring tangible success. The Southern Front headquarters determined the reasons for this as follows: "As a result of the scattered actions of our special units, the liquidation of the uprising was delayed, and the area of the uprising even expanded somewhat to the south and north - west." The scale of the Upper Don Cossack revolt caused serious concern to the Soviet government. 14 Lenin telegrams, notes and orders, mostly encrypted, are devoted directly to the fighting on the Upper Don, and all of them appeared in a relatively short time - from April 20 to June 1, 1919. Lenin urgently urged the commanders of the Southern Front and made every effort to provide the Expeditionary Forces with the necessary assistance and support. May 22: in addition to the 1,000 cadets sent earlier,"we will give another thousand cadets there" 68 ; on May 24, Lenin sends a telegram to Tambov demanding an increase in the mobilization of Communists for the Southern Front 69 ; on the same day, a similar telegram is sent-

60 K. A. Meretskov. In the service of the people, Moscow, 1968, p. 36.

61 D. Keen. Op. ed., p. 43.

62 TSGASA, f. 100, op. 3, d. 100, l. 16.

63 Ibid., d. 99, l. 25.

64 Ibid., l. 16 vol.

65 Ibid., d. 125, l. 85; f. 910, op. 1, d. 2, l. 23.

66 "History of the Civil War in the USSR", vol. 4, p. 174.

67 TSGASA, f. 100, op. 3, d. 100, l. 31.

68 V. I. Lenin. PSS, Vol. 50, p. 321.

69 Ibid., p. 322.

page 137

the gram was sent to Voronezh 70 . Realizing that military measures alone were not enough, Lenin asked the Southern Front as early as April 24, referring to the rebel Cossacks: "Can we promise an amnesty and at this price completely disarm them? Answer me at once. " 71
..The Vyoshensky revolt is in full swing; the Cossacks are advancing; it is probably the end of March, or according to the new style, the beginning of April 1919. Grigory Melekhov's division is moving south towards the front. This was the main strategic direction for both sides, because the rebels could only survive if they joined up with the White Guards, which was no secret to anyone. Units of the Red Army were moving towards the Melekhov division from the south. Grigory interrogates a captured Red Army soldier, a Cossack from the Upper Don, a Khoper:

"- Which regiments were in action yesterday?

- Our third Cossack named after Stenka Razin. In it, almost all of the Khopersky district are Cossacks. The fifth Zaamursky, the Twelfth cavalry and the Sixth Mtsensk.

- Under whose general command? They say Kikvidze led?

"No, Comrade Domnich was in command of the combined detachment."

Brief and seemingly insignificant, this passage is remarkable for its historical accuracy. According to archival data, the 3rd Don Cossack Regiment (as it was officially called; "named after Stepan Razin" is a household name) was part of the 16th Rifle Division 72 in March - May 1919 . During this period, the division fought in the area of Glubokaya station, that is, a hundred versts from the mutiny area 73 . Perhaps one of the regiments of the division (or division) was sent from the front to suppress the mutiny. The 5th Zaamur Cavalry Regiment (official name) was part of the 36th Rifle Division, was sent in full force to eliminate the mutiny and became part of the Expvoisk (as of May 9)74 . The 6th Mtsensk regiment was mentioned above. Let's note a characteristic detail: there was no 12th cavalry regiment among the Expeditionary Forces, but there was a 13th cavalry regiment that operated against the insurgents .75 It was he who commanded the aforementioned Red Army I. N. Domnichenko . Obviously, the prisoner confused or deliberately distorted the facts. Let us remind you that he did not show any desire to go over to the rebels, as Grigory had suggested, although he knew, of course, what fate might await him. But it was the prisoner who confused (or deliberately distorted) the regiment number, and not the author, because a few pages later the novel directly refers to the 13th Cavalry Regiment, whose fighters were pushing the rebels. Grigory's question about Kikvidze is also not accidental. The 3rd regiment was part of the 16th Division, which was previously really commanded by the hero of the Civil War V. I. Kikvidze, who died in January 1919. Grigory could not help but hear about it, since this division had already covered itself with glory at Tsaritsyn in 1918 in battles with the White Cossack Don Army,in the troops of which the hero of the "Quiet Don" also happened to serve. But Grigory might not have known about the death of the chief commander; it is also characteristic that the captured Khoper is in no hurry to inform him about it.

With the beginning of the Vyoshensky Uprising, Shtokman, Kotlyarov and Koshevoy managed to escape from Tatarsky's farm and join up with their own people. In Ust-Khoperskaya Stanitsa, they joined the 1st Moscow Regiment. The novel describes in detail that the regiment consisted almost entirely of workers, the political commissar came from the Michelson factory, and so on. There are no names given here, but the actual justification is accurate. According to archival data, the 1st Moscow Workers ' Division (official name) at the specified time fought at the turn of the Seversky Donets River in the vicinity of the already mentioned 15th Inzen Division 77 , and the 1st Moscow Provincial Regiment (official name), as of May 9

70 Ibid., p. 323.

71 Ibid., p. 290.

72 TSGASA, f. 1255, op. 2, dd. 11, 263, 269.

73 Ibid., f. 100, op. 2, d. 246.

74 Ibid., op. 3, d. 478, l. 62.

75 Ibid., f. 56; op. 2, d. 246.

76 The following biographical information has recently been published about Ivan Nestorovich Domnich: a soldier-cavalryman, then a non-commissioned officer, a participant in the World War, an active fighter for Soviet power, a delegate to the III All-Russian Congress of Soviets, a brigade commander of the Red Army; he died at the front in 1920 (Literaturnaya Rossiya, 31. I. 1975).

77 TSASA, f. 191, op. 5, 65.

page 138

In 1919, it was part of Expvoisk 78 . Among the Red Army units deployed against the rebels in April, Sholokhov also named the Ryazan and Tambov courses, which, as they say, " fought with selfless courage." They are only mentioned in the novel. Archival materials also confirm that in mid-April 1919, the 1st Tambov Infantry Courses and the 30th Ryazan Infantry Courses arrived to replenish the Expeditionary Forces .79 The use of future commanders as ordinary soldiers was an emergency measure. Lenin understood this and noted with alarm in a note dated May 28:"We have to resort to heroic measures, including sending command courses to the south by the masses, which may soon deprive the Red Army of Red commanders." 80
A well-known scene from the novel is when Grigory hacked four sailors to death. Here, too, there is a real rationale. The list of Expvoisk units includes the 1st, 2nd and 3rd battalions of the 3rd Kronstadt Regiment, as well as the separately operating Marine Infantry Battalion 81 . It is noteworthy that in another place Sholokhov tells how in May " the Cossacks were almost completely exterminated only recently arrived Kronstadt regiment." A little later, an episode of the heroic death of the Red Army soldiers surrounded on the bank of the Don is described, ending with the author's remark:"One hundred and sixteen fallen last near the Don were all communists of the International Company." And among the units of the Expvoisk, the documents name the 2nd International Battalion 82 .

A prominent place in the novel is occupied by the description of the anti-Soviet mutiny in the Serdobsky regiment. In the course of these events, Shtokman is killed, Kotlyarov is brutally dealt with, and a heavy trace remains in the mind of Mikhail Koshevoy. At the height of the Civil War, cases of mutinies in some unstable units of the Red Army took place on various fronts, but the reasons were usually the same: violation of the class principle in their formation; weak political work; hostility, or even a direct conspiracy of the command staff from former officers. Sholokhov shows all these factors not only in a figurative form, but also in a direct author's word: "Among the Red Army men - all Saratov peasants of late ages - there were clearly moods that did not contribute to raising morale at all. The company had a depressing number of illiterates and people from the well-to-do Kulak part of the village. The commissar of the regiment was half composed of former officers; the commissar - a weak-willed and weak-willed man - did not enjoy authority among the Red Army men; and the traitors - the regimental commander, the chief of staff, and two company commanders - having decided to surrender the regiment, before the eyes of the cell that saw nothing-carried out criminal work to demoralize the Red Army mass." The social analysis here is impeccable: all the most important factors of rebellion are named. But more interesting, perhaps, is that the specific history of this minor episode of the civil war is reflected by Sholokhov in full accordance with real events.

In the "History of the Civil War", when describing the course of the battles in January 1919, during the victorious offensive of the Red troops against the White Cossack army, the 4th Serdobsky Regiment of the Ural Division was noted as particularly distinguished; it is further said that at the same time "most of the regiment died in battle","many Red Army communists were killed" 83 . According to archival data, in December 1918, the 4th Serdobsky Regiment arrived on the Southern Front as part of the 3rd Ural Division. In February 1919, apparently due to heavy losses, this regiment, along with other units or most likely with their remnants, was merged into the 23rd Rifle Division and became officially known as the 204th Serdobsky Rifle Regiment 84 . Thus, the new unit consisted of the remnants of once combat-ready units, replenished with recruits from the Penza province, in the south of which Serdobsk stands. Pernicious sentiments among a part of the soldiers of the 23rd Division were also mentioned in our literature."
78 Ibid., f. 100, op. 3, d. 478, l. 62.

79 Ibid., 125, p. 85.

80 "Lenin's Collection" XXXIV, p. 153.

81 TSGASA, f. 100, op. 3, dd. 125, 478.

82 Ibid.

83 "History of the Civil War in the USSR", vol. 3, p. 342.

84 TSGASA, f. 6, op. 4, d. 56; f. 100, op. 2, d. 246; f. 108, op. 1, d. 100.

85 K. A. Meretskov. Op. ed., p. 37.

page 139

Serdobsky regiment and raised a mutiny, described in detail in "Quiet of the Don", and in the novel the following date is given: April 28, it tells about the betrayal of the regiment commander, former staff captain Voronovsky and his assistant, former Lieutenant Volkov, about the murder of the regiment commissar, etc. In a telegram from V. M. Gittis dated April 15, it was reported: "Recent events on the insurgent front are extremely characteristic: the 204th Serdobsky regiment disarmed the 2nd barrage detachment and, having killed its commander, the commissar. C), went over to the side of the Cossack rebels. " 86 The date in the telegram is probably given in a new style, and the event itself occurred, therefore, a few days earlier (with the means of communication at that time, and even in the remote steppe regions where there was no telegraph, information from the periphery of the front arrived with great delay). So the mutiny happened around April 10, or the end of March, old style. But if we assume that the telegram mentioned was dated according to the old calendar, then the time of the mutiny is correctly indicated in the novel.

Another telegram from the command of the 9th army reported details of the betrayal: with the transition of the regiment to the side of the enemy, the latter's forces increased by 380 bayonets, 2 guns and 10 machine guns. 87 Similar data are given in "Quiet of the Don", in Kudinov's letter to Grigory: "Four guns were handed over to us (but only the damned communists-batteries managed to shine); more than 200 shells and 9 machine guns." And another thing: in the documentary materials of the 23rd Rifle Division for March-April 1919, information was preserved that the commander of the 204th Serdobsky regiment was Vitaly Vranovsky, a former staff captain, and the commander - in-chief was Viktor Volkov, a former lieutenant; it is also important that both of them, judging by their home addresses, were Originally from Serdobsk , they might have known each other and known many of their fellow soldiers, a fact that made it easier for them to work as conspirators. In Sholokhov's case, both former officers are named with exact biographical signs, only Vranovsky became Voronovsky; the author either deliberately changed the surname here, or, more likely, it got on the pages of the novel from someone's oral story; naturally, in this case the Polish surname Vranovsky was Russified. The mutiny of the Serdobsky regiment is not mentioned in the public scientific literature.

By mid-April (New Century), Red troops launched a decisive offensive against the rebels in a south-north direction, along the right bank of the Don. The novel describes in detail the retreat of the rebels, including Grigory Melekhov's division, under the blows of the red units. However, the Cossack detachments put up strong resistance. A telegram from V. M. Gittis dated April 24 says: "The order of the commander-9 of April 13 on the transition of all troops to a decisive offensive has not yet yielded rapid tangible results, both due to the weak overall morale of the troops, especially in the northern sector of the uprising area, where units sent from the rear, from reserve battalions, are operating, and mainly due to the resolute resistance of the rebels, who are mobilizing all forces"; further it was said about a plot in the Serdobsky regiment, which "complicated the situation and slowed down the operation" in the area of the village of Ust-Medveditskaya. Nevertheless, the Expeditionary Forces were successful; "in any case, in the south-west and south, the area of the uprising is narrowing more and more, and our troops have already reached the villages of Kazanskaya-Migulinskaya, that is, the main centers of the uprising." 89
The White Guard command tried to take advantage of the anti-Soviet mutiny on the Don. In April 1919, the South Russian counter-revolution was preparing for a counteroffensive. By that time, the Whites had captured the North Caucasus, held the Donets Basin, received weapons and equipment from Entente depots through the Black Sea ports, and established contact with the Vyoshensk rebels. In "Quiet of the Don" it is described in some detail. So it was in real life, because air communication between Novocherkassk and Vyoshenskaya was carried out quite regularly, directives, money and scarce ammunition were brought to the rebel leaders by courier . 90 On May 6, Denikin went on the offensive, on May 24, the White Guards from the front were sent to the front line.-

86 TSGASA, f. 191, op. 3, d. 215, l. 2.

87 Ibid., f. 192, op. 3, d. 162, l. 22 vol.

88 Ibid., f. 1304, op. 1, d. 112, l. 81.

89 Ibid., f. 192, op. 3, d. 110, l. 12.

90 D. Kin. Op. ed., p. 43.

page 140

the power of the military flotilla crossed the Donets 91 . The front of the 9th army was broken through, and a mounted group of General A. A. Sekretov moved in the direction of Veshenskaya. On May 25, Gittis telegraphed Khvesin: "The actions of the enemy who broke through the front of the 9th Army in the direction of Morozovskaya ... indicate, in connection with other data, the task of connecting with the rebel front that the enemy is persistently pursuing."92 On May 26, it became known at the headquarters of the Southern Front that the White Guards had occupied the Glubokaya station and were moving towards the Millerovo 93 railway junction . The aggravation of the military situation in the south caused concern to Lenin. On May 30, he telegraphed to the Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council:"I am extremely surprised by your silence at a time when, according to information, although not completely verified, the breakthrough in the Millerian direction has grown to the size of an almost completely irreparable catastrophe." 94 Indeed, the front on the Seversky Donets collapsed at that time, and the situation of the Express Troops became critical: a strong cavalry group of the enemy was approaching them from the rear. On May 30, Gittis ordered Khvesin to withdraw everything he could from other sections of the front against the insurgents and try to organize resistance to Denikin's forces .95 However, a breakthrough was not achieved, and on June 7, the White Cossacks joined forces with the rebels 96, which the Southern Front leadership announced the next day 97 .

This was the end of the history of the Upper Don rebellion. Amateur regiments and divisions of the insurgents were disbanded and merged into regular White Guard units. Epaulettes appeared again on the Cossack tunics, and the former generals led them "to Moscow". Even at the beginning of the mutiny, its leader Kudinov predicted: "We will come to Krasnov with a guilty head." And so it happened, although it was not Krasnov who had to be "blamed", but the generals of Denikin's Don army Sidorin. This circumstance once again emphasized the weakness, narrowness and unviability of petty-bourgeois anarchy, which sometimes tried to sit between two chairs, but in fact only helped the White Guards to prolong the war against the Soviet government.

As you know, historicism, that is, loyalty to the spirit, and often even to the letter of sources, is an indispensable feature of any truly high realistic work. Many examples of this were given by Russian classical literature 98 . It is natural that such works aroused close attention among historians .99 Sholokhov's epic "The Quiet Don" is an amazing example of a classic novel of the XX century. Its author has created a masterpiece of truthful, historically concrete depiction of reality in its revolutionary development.

91 TSGASA, f. 100, op. 3, d. 100, l. 168.

92 Ibid., l. 180.

93 Ibid., p. 179.

94 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 50, p. 329.

95 TSGASA, f. 100, op. 3, d. 100, l. 261.

96 K. A. Meretskov. Op. ed., p. 37.

97 TSGASA. f. 100. op. 3, d. 100, l. 277.

98 See about this: V. A. Dyakov. Historical realities of "Hadji Murad". Voprosy Istorii, 1973, No. 5.

99 See, in particular, L. V. Cherepnin. Historical views of classics of Russian literature, Moscow, 1968; V. V. Kargalov. Ancient Russia in Soviet literature. M. 1971.

page 141

Permanent link to this publication: