Stalin's Scribe: Literature, Ambition, and Survival: The Life of Mikhail Sholokhov

by Brian Boeck

Overview

A masterful and definitive biography of one of the most misunderstood and controversial writers in Russian literature.

Mikhail Sholokhov is arguably one of the most contentious recipients of the Nobel Prize in literature in history. As a young man, Sholokhov’s epic novel, Quiet Don, became an unprecedented overnight success.

Stalin’s Scribe is the first biography of a man who was once one of the Soviet Union’s most prominent political figures. Thanks to the opening of Russia’s archives, Brian Boeck discovers that Sholokhov’s official Soviet biography is actually a tangled web of legends, half-truths, and contradictions. Boeck examines the complex connection between an author and a dictator, revealing how a Stalinist courtier became an ideological acrobat and consummate politician in order to stay in favor and remain relevant after the dictator’s death.

Stalin's Scribe is remarkable biography that both reinforces and clashes with our understanding of the Soviet system. It reveals a Sholokhov who is bold, uncompromising, and sympathetic—and reconciles him with the vindictive and mean-spirited man described in so many accounts of late Soviet history.

Shockingly, at the height of the terror, which claimed over a million lives, Sholokhov became a member of the most minuscule subset of the Soviet Union’s population—the handful of individuals whom Stalin personally intervened to save.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781681778747
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	02/05/2019
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Brian J. Boeck holds a Ph.D. in Russian history from Harvard University and have taught Russian and Soviet history for over a decade at DePaul University. He is the author of Imperial Boundaries (Cambridge) and lives in Chicago, Illinois.

Editorial Reviews

★ 11/26/2018
Boeck (Imperial Boundaries), former professor of Russian and Soviet history at DePaul University, paints a nuanced portrait in this literary biography of a Nobel Prize–winning Russian novelist and accused (but exonerated) plagiarist. A “prize protégé” of Josef Stalin, a target of rival novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and called by Salman Rushdie a “patsy of the regime,” Sholokhov was a controversial figure of the Soviet era. Boeck vividly relates how Sholokhov, whose fate “hinged on satisfying a dictator’s literary cravings,” reached success during a time when other Soviet authors were being censored and imprisoned (and accusing Sholokhov of plagiarism); he survived secret police plots to frame him and defended friends wrongly charged as anti-Communists, while writing articles, speeches, plays, and the epic And Quiet Flows the Don. Boeck also depicts Sholokhov’s slow and painful fall from grace after Stalin’s death in 1953, when “every certainty he had known for two decades had suddenly been thrown into question” and copies of a regime-approved “improved” version of Quiet Don appeared on Soviet bookshelves. Boeck’s portrayal of his subject’s international ill-fame, habit of hiding his emotions, clashes with Stalin’s successor Khrushchev, and drinking bouts make this a deeply engaging take on an important literary figure. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"A provocative and sympathetic new biography. No small achievement."

Washington Post

"An important and stimulating book."

The Russian Review

"Boeck relates with Dostoyevskian verisimilitude the psychological agonies Sholokhov must have endured at the time. Sholokhov’s struggle to stay true to his vision in an atmosphere of blinding darkness is the theme of Boeck’s riveting political biography. To his great credit, Boeck himself is never blind to Sholokhov’s profound flaws or to the fact that his struggle was largely doomed from the start. Insightful and compelling."

Los Angeles Review of Books

"Excellent. Boeck has written more than a biography of a single writer; he also grants us unexpected insights into the minds of two of the most important Soviet leaders. I hope that Boeck’s book will help bring back our attention to a remarkable novel."

Robert Chandler

"[Stalin’s Scribe] tries to explain how Sholokhov lost the conscience he once had. Mr. Boeck observes insightfully that faking one’s accomplishments and constructing a false identity were hardly offenses unique to Sholokhov."

Wall Street Journal

"[Stalin’s Scribe] tries to explain how Sholokhov lost the conscience he once had. Mr. Boeck observes insightfully that faking one’s accomplishments and constructing a false identity were hardly offenses unique to Sholokhov."

Wall Street Journal

"A provocative and sympathetic new biography. No small achievement."

Washington Post

An accessible narrative of not only Russian empire building but the collapse of an unique borderland.

The Historian

Engagingly written, broadly researched, and rigorous.

Peter Holquist

2018-11-11

Biography of Mikhail Sholokhov (1905-1984), winner of the 1965 Nobel Prize in literature and a favorite of Joseph Stalin.

In his second book, Boeck (Russian and Soviet History/DePaul Univ.; Imperial Boundaries: Cossack Communities and Empire-Building in the Age of Peter the Great, 2009) works hard—and mostly successfully—"to reconcile the bold, uncompromising, and sympathetic Sholokhov…with the vindictive, mean-spirited man described in many accounts of late Soviet history." Sholokhov was an obscure 21-year-old short story writer when he wrote his classic novel, And Quiet Flows the Don. Appearing serially in literary magazines from 1926 to 1940, the narrative tells the story of a Cossack family whose hero fights in World War I and the Russian Revolution. The first two volumes were bestsellers, but in 1930, his editor regarded further installments as insufficiently pro-revolutionary. Sholokhov refused to make changes but agreed to visit Maxim Gorky, the nation's literary idol, to discuss the matter. To his amazement, the meeting included Stalin. Grilled on the controversy, Sholokhov satisfied Stalin, who considered himself a patron of the arts. He not only approved publication, but gave the author his personal secretary's phone number. Almost immediately, Sholokhov witnessed Stalin's murderous collectivization campaign and famine followed by the Terror, which devoured many colleagues. He appealed to Stalin, who freed several friends and sent food to his home district. Like naïve patriots throughout history, Sholokhov considered his ruler blameless but betrayed by evil underlings, and he remained a protégé, producing fawning speeches and writing that he struggled to repress after Stalin's death. By the 1960s, he enjoyed international celebrity but wrote little of consequence, and his privileged status and literary conservatism did not endear him to the younger generation.

Boeck displays his wide range of knowledge of the Soviet Union and delivers an insightful, gripping, squirm-inducing portrait of a great author who loyally served his government—perhaps too loyally.

Kirkus Reviews