As you know, many books have been written so far about the October Revolution. I read two well-known and well written novels about it and compared them. Though I have read more than two books, there are lot of books in fact, about the October Revolution. One of the novels, 'And Quiet Flows the Don' by Mikhail Sholokhov, is well-known. Sholokhov himself is in a way like you. Indeed he emerged out of a revolution. He is part of the revolutionary class. He is an author of the revolution.
Spending his youth during the time of the October Revolution, he wrote 'And Quiet Flows the Don' under the impact of events unfolding during the revolution. The second novel is Alexey Tolstoy's The Road to Calvary, which was counter-revolutionary at first. The novel The Road to Calvary is better than the novel And Quiet Flows the Don, not only in terms of the story, but also in terms of the tendency towards the principles of the revolution and the attraction to the phenomena of the revolution, its ups and downs, and beautiful depictions of them. The Road to Calvary describes the revolution as something beautiful.
I read somewhere about the novel 'And Quiet Flows the Don', that when Sholokhov finished writing it, he was not allowed to publish it. But later Maxim Gorky, Chairman of the audit of the so-called Ministry of Culture of the Soviet Union in those days-- and that ministry was considered an insider from the very beginning of the revolution--said, "I personally guarantee that Sholokhov is one of us." Otherwise, people in charge of cultural affairs in the socialist system of the Soviet Union claimed, as Sholokhov was from Kazakhstan, in his novel he had reflected and inspired Kazakh and local feelings of the Don area.
July 13, 1994
