Classics of Russian Literature | Revolutions and Civil War (Lecture 30)

Lecture 30: When Sholokhov’s Cossacks think of war, they think of the Cossack traditions of cavalry charges and hand-to-hand combat. In World War I, they face the armies of industrialized Germany and Austria-Hungary. The novel’s presentation of historical change is only intensified by the ideological strife, new for the Cossacks, involved in revolutions and civil war. Suddenly, all of the old social norms turn topsy-turvy, and a politically uneducated man like Gregor, as well as his family and friends, are hard pressed to know in which direction to turn. They end up on many different sides, hardly recognizing people that they have known since childhood. In many ways, the same holds true for the supposedly stalwart ranks of the Bolsheviks, who position themselves to destroy the Cossack culture and life. The novel is an unsurpassed presentation of what it feels like to experience revolution firsthand. Some 35 years after writing the novel, Sholokhov would occupy a very different position when he called for the execution of some dissidents in the USSR. Then, some of his previously loyal readers excoriated him with a horrendous curse for a writer: “We wish you complete sterility.”

Suggested Reading:
Isaak Babel, The Collected Stories, which includes “Red Cavalry” and other stories that offer a different account of the Cossacks who fought on the side of the Red Army and the Bolsheviks.
Roy Medevedev, Problems in the Literary Biography of Mikhail Sholokhov.