N. Zabolotsky and M. Sholokhov

Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov was born on 11 May 1905 in the Kruzhilin hamlet of the Veshenskaya Cossack village on the Don (now Rostov region). He studied at a gymnasium (the years of war and revolution kept him from finishing it), then came to Moscow to continue his studies but could not get in and had to change many jobs; even so, he always found time for self-education. His first works were printed in 1923; in 1926 the collections «Донские рассказы» and «Лазоревая степь» appeared, in 1927 «О Колчаке, крапиве и прочем». Great fame came with the novel «Тихий Дон» (1928–1940), translated into many languages and awarded the Nobel Prize in 1965. In 1941–1945 Sholokhov was a war correspondent. After the war he wrote the story «Судьба человека» (1956), about the fate of a simple Russian soldier, Andrei Sokolov. It is a story of memory: a former soldier tells his life to a chance companion. According to the book, Sokolov suffered in captivity and escaped; his wife and daughter died when a bomb hit Voronezh; his one hope was his son Anatoly, but he died on 9 May, at the very end of the war. The excerpt is about his post-war life. Sokolov buries his son in German soil, does not want to go back to Voronezh and goes to a friend in Uryupinsk, working as a driver. Near a tea house he sees a hungry, ragged boy, Vanyusha, an orphan: his father died at the front, his mother was killed by a bomb on a train. Sokolov says to the boy «I am your father»; Vanya, overjoyed, throws his arms round his neck and cries that he knew he would be found. Sokolov washes him, dresses him, sleeps beside him and for the first time in a long while sleeps peacefully. In November he knocks down a cow and loses his driving licence; he works as a carpenter in winter, then sets off with Vanya for Kashary. His heart is ailing, every night he sees his lost family in a dream «behind barbed wire»; by day he holds himself together. The story's narrator parts from them and at the end hopes the boy will grow up a man of unbending will. Main idea: war could not break the man — love and responsibility hold him to life.