Why this book
Sholokhov spent decades among the Don Cossacks, and this sweeping portrait of their world earned him the Nobel Prize in Literature. It stands as Russia's great epic of ordinary people caught in extraordinary times — as vast, as patient, and as unstoppable as the mighty river whose name it carries.
The Story
Picture the farming village of Tatarsky, strung along the great river Don. Here the Cossacks live by horse, plough, and saber — proud, hot-tempered, and half-wild, warriors and farmers both. Among them rides Grigory Melekhov, a dark, hot-blooded young man with his whole restless life still stretched out before him.
Next door lives Aksinia, the beautiful, unhappy wife of the Cossack Stepan. Her husband beats her without mercy, therefore she is starved for the smallest kindness. When Grigory's dark eyes meet hers across the yard, something reckless and unstoppable catches fire between them — a love that neither will manage to escape.
While Stepan is away at the summer war-camps, Grigory and Aksinia become lovers. They cannot hide it — the whole village watches and whispers behind their hands. But the two are far past caring now; their hunger for each other drowns out every warning, every shame, and every threat of ruin.
Grigory's stern father, Pantelei, is shamed before the whole village by the scandal. Therefore he marries his son off, by force, to Natalia — a gentle, hard-working, devoted girl from a respected family. Grigory bows to his father's will and takes the wedding vows, though his heart is nowhere in the church.
But no vow can make Grigory love Natalia. He lies cold beside her at night, his heart still burning for Aksinia next door. Natalia feels his indifference like a wound that will not close, therefore the young bride grows pale, quiet, and heartbroken in a house that gives her no love.
At last Grigory can bear the pretense no longer. He walks out of his father's house and runs off with Aksinia in open defiance of them all. Together the two hire themselves out as servants on the estate of the wealthy Listnitsky family, far from the eyes of Tatarsky.
Left behind and publicly disgraced, Natalia sinks into black despair. In her anguish she takes up a sharp scythe and tries to end her own life. But she survives the wound — crippled and scarred in the neck, she creeps back to Grigory's family and waits, still loving the man who left her.
On the Listnitsky estate, Aksinia bears Grigory a baby daughter, and for one brief, golden season the runaway lovers taste something like real happiness — a small family and a home of their own. But peace never lasts long on the Don, and heavy shadows are already gathering on the horizon.
Then the Great War of the world breaks out across Europe. Grigory is called up and rides away to the distant front as a Cossack cavalryman, sabre at his hip. He leaves Aksinia and their infant daughter behind him, therefore the little family is split apart by history's very first blow.
In his first real battle Grigory cuts down a fleeing enemy soldier with his saber, and the dead man's terrified face haunts his sleep for weeks afterward. Therefore the reckless village boy begins to change inside — the war is teaching him, blow by blow, that killing hollows a man's very soul.
Grigory is wounded in the fighting and lies among broken, dying men in a crowded hospital. There he first hears bitter talk against the Tsar and the generals who feed common men into the guns for nothing. Therefore he returns to the front deeply troubled, no longer sure whom, or what, he fights for.
Meanwhile, back at the estate, the young master Yevgeny Listnitsky preys on the lonely, unguarded Aksinia and finally seduces her. When Grigory comes home on leave and learns of the betrayal, his fierce Cossack pride shatters. Therefore he thrashes the young lord with his whip and storms out of the estate for good.
Wounded now in his heart, Grigory turns his back on Aksinia and goes home to his loyal, long-suffering Natalia. She forgives him everything and gladly takes him back. Therefore, for a while, he tries hard to be a proper husband, works his father's land, and Natalia joyfully bears him twins.
But grief soon finds Aksinia too. Alone and abandoned at the estate, her little daughter — Grigory's own child — falls sick with scarlet fever and dies helpless in her arms. Therefore Aksinia is left with absolutely nothing, her single comfort torn away by the same cruel and indifferent world.
Then, in the far cities, the Tsar falls and revolution sweeps like wildfire across all Russia. On the Don, the Cossacks are thrown into bloody confusion — Reds against Whites, village against village, brother against brother. Therefore every man is forced to choose a side, and Grigory, least of all, knows which is right.
At first Grigory rides with the Reds, drawn by their ringing promise of justice and land for poor working men. But then he watches them shoot unarmed prisoners in cold blood by the roadside, and his stomach turns in disgust. Therefore he finds he cannot stay among them either.
When the Cossacks rise in open revolt against Red rule, Grigory takes command of their horsemen and fights with dazzling, reckless brilliance. He becomes a feared and famous leader. But with every victory he grows emptier and colder inside, for he is cutting down his own neighbors, friends, and countrymen.
Amid all the chaos, Grigory drifts helplessly back to Aksinia, unable to tear his old love out of his heart. When his faithful Natalia learns that he has betrayed her once again, something inside her finally breaks. Therefore, carrying his unborn child, she makes a terrible and secret decision.
In her despair Natalia secretly rids herself of the unborn baby — and afterward the bleeding will not stop. She dies at home in her mother-in-law's arms, forgiving Grigory with her very last breath. Therefore the gentlest, most faithful soul in the whole story is destroyed by his endless faithlessness.
Soon the whole tide of the civil war turns hard against the Cossacks. Grigory and his aging father, Pantelei, are swept south with the beaten White armies, riding through freezing mud, hunger, and rampant disease. Therefore the old, settled world of the Don begins to crumble to pieces all around them.
On that bitter, endless retreat, typhus sweeps like a scythe through the exhausted ranks. Old Pantelei, worn to the bone and far from his home, is struck down by the raging fever and dies among strangers on the road. Therefore Grigory loses the stern, proud father who shaped his whole life.
Back at the emptied farm, Grigory's mother, Ilyinichna, has already buried too many of her children and now waits in vain for her one wandering son. Worn down at last by grief and endless loss, the old woman quietly fails and dies at home before he can ever return to her.
The long war finally grinds to its end, and the Reds stand victorious across the land. Grigory, a marked man for having led the great uprising, dares not go home and live in peace. Therefore, hunted and utterly exhausted, he drifts for a time with a band of desperate outlaws in the hills.
Longing now only for one quiet corner of the world, Grigory comes back for Aksinia at last. She has waited faithfully for him through all these long years, therefore she gladly leaves the farm to run away south with him, both of them hoping for a new life far from the endless killing.
They ride together by night to slip past a Red patrol. But in the cold grey light of dawn a single bullet finds Aksinia, and she slides silently from her saddle into Grigory's arms. He lifts her gently down and, utterly helpless, watches the one true love of his whole life die.
Grigory digs her grave with his bare, trembling hands and buries Aksinia there beneath the wide, open sky. Then he lifts his head — and above him he sees only a black sun burning in a black heaven. Everything he ever fought and loved for is gone; he stands utterly, wholly alone.
Emptied of everything, Grigory throws his weapons into the grey ice of the Don and turns his steps homeward at long last. At the gate of his father's house stands his little son, Mishatka — the sole surviving thread of his whole family. He lifts the boy in his arms; that is all he has left.
What it means
This is the deep meaning of Sholokhov's epic: history's vast tides do not spare the small and beating human heart. Grigory chose no side wholly, and so was crushed between them all — reminding us that when great nations tear themselves apart, it is ordinary loves and families who quietly pay the price.
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