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

About this book

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 Sholokhovs epic novel Quiet Don became an unprecedented overnight success. Stalins Scribe is the first biography of a man who was once one of the Soviet Unions most prominent political figures. Thanks to the opening of Russias archives Brian Boeck discovers that Sholokhovs 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 dictators death. Stalins 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 sympatheticand 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 Unions populationthe handful of individuals whom Stalin personally intervened to save.