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vated Soviet audiences and the title of hero of
the Soviet Union was awarded for the first time
to the pilot rescuers. The final expedition in
1937 established the first floating station at the
North Pole. For these achievements, Shmidt also
received the Hero of the Soviet Union award in
1937. Shmidt was also a respected mathemati-
cian who published important work on the
abstract theory of groups and algebra. Dismissed
in the course of the Great Purge of the 1930s, he
continued academic work as a professor of
mathematics at Moscow State University. He
died in Moscow on September 7, 1956.
1932, but the second did not appear until 1960.
Sholokhov joined the COMMUNIST PARTY in 1932
and received numerous Soviet awards, including
the LENIN and Stalin PRIZE s. In the post-Stalin era
after 1953, he first spoke out in favor of the lit-
erary thaw, criticizing Stalinist literary bureau-
crats, but he gradually came to articulate more
conservative views. He condemned Boris PAS -
TERNAK for initially accepting the 1958 Nobel
Prize in Literature (although Sholokhov would
not renounce his own Nobel Prize seven years
later), and called for harsher sentences against
Andrei SINYAVSKY and Yuli Daniel after their
landmark 1966 trial for “slander” and “defama-
tion” of the Soviet state. Questions about the
true authorship of the early parts of Quiet Flows
the Don, although never fully substantiated, arose
periodically during his life.
Sholokhov, Mikhail Aleksandrovich
(1905-1984)
writer
A prominent writer from the Soviet years who
was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in
1965, Sholokhov was born in a small Cossack
village in Rostov oblast in the region of the Don
River. He was later educated in Moscow, where
he worked as a teacher, clerk, and journalist.
After the OCTOBER REVOLUTION of 1917, he
embarked on several food procurement expedi-
tions to confiscate grain from peasants for the
hungry cities of the north. Sholokhov first
emerged as a writer during the mid-1920s with
Donskie rasskazy ( Tales of the Don, 1925). Although
not a Cossack himself, Sholokhov drew deeply
from Cossack themes in this and the works that
followed. His four-volume masterpiece Quiet
Flows the Don was published between 1928 and
1940. It is often considered a Soviet version of
TOLSTOY 's War and Peace for its rich historical can-
vas and its attempts to portray the complex
impact of the revolution and civil war on the
lives of COSSACKS and peasants. Far more
nuanced than the many proletarian novels that
sought to conform to the strictures of socialist
realism, Quiet Flows the Don quickly became a
classic of Soviet literature, bringing acclaim and
official privileges to Sholokhov. His next novel,
Virgin Soil Upturned, ran into some problems with
the censors; the first volume was published in
Shostakovich, Dmitrii Dmitrievich
(1906-1975)
composer
A brilliant composer, Shostakovich repeatedly
ran afoul of Soviet cultural authorities during
the Stalin era but endured to produce a large
body of work. Shostakovich first studied at the
Leningrad Conservatory and after graduation
was appointed to its faculty, where he taught
from 1939 to 1948. In early works such as his
First Symphony (1925) and his opera The Nose
(1927), based on a story by GOGOL , he revealed
an innovative, cosmopolitan, and witty talent.
The next few years saw some important, well-
received works, including his Second and Third
Symphonies (1927, 1929), which glorified the
young revolutionary society, and the ballet The
Golden Age (1929-30). But his opera Lady Mac-
beth of Mtsensk (1930-32) drew the wrath of cul-
tural commissars for its “formalism,” at a time
when socialist realism was hardening into offi-
cial dogma. Over the following decade, Shosta-
kovich managed to find the right balance
between artistic creativity and official sanction,
with works such as the Seventh (“Leningrad”)
symphony (1941) that met expectations while
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