Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Stalin's Scribe: Literature, Ambition, and Survival: The Life of Mikhail Sholokhov

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

Boeck, Brian J.

Paperback

Historical FiguresLiterary FiguresPresidents & Heads of State

ISBN10: 1643134795
ISBN13: 9781643134796
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: Apr 7 2020
Pages: 400
Weight: 1.32
Height: 0.91 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

Mikhail Sholokhov is arguably one of the most contentious recipients of the Nobel Prize in Literature. 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 a 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.

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