Sholokhov had made himself unpopular by pointing out that Daniel and Sinyavsky would have suffered a worse fate if their writings had been traced to them in the 1920s. In the 1960s rumours were revived that Sholokhov had stolen much of Тихий Дон (Quiet Flows the Don) from the memoirs of a White officer. A scholar from Leningrad now took up the case against Sholokhov, alleging that the text of the novel was mainly by some other hand. In Paris she published her findings under the pseudonym ‘D’. Seeing a chance of attacking Sholokhov, Solzhenitsyn led a number of other figures who persistently accused him of plagiarism.

In Scandinavia Geir Kjetsaa led a team of experts to examine the text of Тихий Дон and to compare it stylistically with Sholokhov’s prose in his other published work. They disproved D’s case, by showing that Тихий Дон was plainly by the same author as Поднятая целина (Virgin Soil Upturned) and Донские рассказы (Tales from the Don). I was asked to review Kjetsaa’s book and I consulted with some statisticians in Ulster who assured me that the Scandinavian team had worked on a sound methodical basis. My piece appeared in the Slavonic and East European Review in London.

I wrote to Kjetsaa and I also started corresponding with Herman Ermolaev in Princeton. We agreed that we should present a united front to defend Sholokhov from the accusations that he had stolen his greatest novel from some other writer. Any remaining doubt about authorship was eventually disproved by Lev Kolodny, who published extensive extracts from the manuscript of Тихий Дон.

In 1977 I wrote asking might I visit Sholokhov at his home and he replied that we should come after распутица, that period in the spring when roads were virtually impassable with the break up of the ice and snow causing widespread flooding. Вёшенская is a small town on the middle course of the River Don, which is flowing eastward in that area. (Slightly downstream from Вёшенская Sholokhov situated the fictional village of Татарский where the Melekhovs had their home in the novel.)

In April, Volodya and I travelled overnight by train from Moscow. We had been told to alight at Миллерово, the nearest railhead to Вёшенская.

Sholokhov was a highly regarded figure, especially in south Russia, and a great reception committee was waiting to regale us with a substantial breakfast, even including a few toasts with vodka. After we had enjoyed this hospitality we set off in a substantial cross-country vehicle to cover the 100 kilometres of hilly road to Sholokhov’s family home.

Accommodation had been booked for us in a ‘hotel’ in Вёшенская. This was a little building with only one or two rooms, but fitting well with the rural feel of the area. We looked out towards the wide expanse of the Don that was still in full flood after the winter ice had melted.

The станица had grown into a small country town since the Civil War but it always had its own atmosphere, with single-storied houses looking out onto a simple grid pattern of rough streets. Volodya was able to point out some of the bigger houses where richer people, such as Mokhov, might have lived.

We were invited for our main meal to Sholokhov’s house which stood at the edge of the town, with a view of the river. Sholokhov was born in May 1905 and in 1975 great preparations had been made to celebrate his seventieth birthday in Moscow. Sadly he suffered quite a severe stroke and had to cancel his visit to the capital. When we came to see him in 1977 his physical movement was slightly impaired but it was plain that the stroke had not affected his brain. He received us in a dining room filled with good things to eat. Maria Petrovna restricted his drinking to one or two hospitable toasts and we had an agreeable chat about Ireland and my war years in the Royal Navy.

He had a good sense of humour and inscribed my opening page of Тихий Дон: ‘To the Don Cossack Murphy, living abroad under an assumed name...’ (I have later passed this document to Roger Keys, who gave me such good support in Ulster.)

The next morning a more formal interview had been arranged for Volodya and me. Sholokhov knew no English and for this occasion he had invited Nadezhda Kuznetsova, a young woman who taught English in the local school. Volodya brought her up short at one point when she wanted to correct my rendering of some passage from Тихий Дон.

I thought it would be pointless to question Mikhail Aleksandrovich about the plagiarism campaign and I asked him rather about prototypes for several of the characters in the novel, especially for the main hero Grigorii Melekhov. He confirmed that the character of Grigorii was largely based on the tormented life of Kharlampi Yermakov, who in 1919 had commanded a division of cavalry in the Вёшенская rebellion. Sholokhov had several long talks with him before he was eventually executed by the Soviet administration.

However, both Sholokhov and I knew full well that prototypes only provide a starting point for the creation of a character in a novel and I sensed that he was tired of endless queries about which individuals might be the basis for characters in his masterpiece.

The following day we went down the river for a fishing expedition. In 1977 there was not yet any bridge across the Don at Вёшенская and in April ferries were crowded with lorries carrying people and equipment over for the busy time of the spring sowing. With a local Party official we had set off downstream from the станица when we were hailed by loud shouts from the south bank. This was to help a woman in labour whom we had to take across to the hospital north of the river, where I hope she was successfully delivered.

We continued on for a couple of miles and then put in to the north shore to join our hosts for the day, a fishing co-operative who invited us to lunch. This consisted of a stew made from the fish they had caught that morning—not much to my taste, since I think fish from a slow river like the Don have a lingering taste of mud. But I’m sure the stew was very nutritious and I constrained myself to swallow it. After the meal one of the fishermen invited me to go out in his boat with him to lift some of his fish traps (вентерь, вентеря). The boat was a flat-bottomed wooden craft which he handled with great skill. With the spring floods the Don had opened to quarter of a mile wide and in our section it had spread out so that he was trying to steer in fast-flowing current between the trees. I was sure that at any moment we were going to capsize or run into a tree trunk, but our friend managed to steer his unsteady boat and to lift several traps—while I felt my camera was in peril as I tried to catch him on film.

These traps consist of willow rings holding in a framework of small branches and must be a design that has altered little through the ages, since traps in the Don are virtually identical with those in the River Severn at the opposite end of Europe. They were a good reminder of the scene in Sholokhov’s novel when Koshevoi has to lift his fish traps before he goes off to join the Red forces near Татарский.

After my adventurous outing I was given a formal invitation to join the co-operative who made this their daily work. We spent a couple more days soaking up the local atmosphere in the black earth area that seemed so far-removed from Moscow. When the day came for our departure we were taken to Миллерово by the local Party Secretary. Unhappily I do not remember whether this was still Луговой, who was a close friend of Sholokhov and had faced many perils with him when the Rostov secret police tried to accuse them both of plotting a Cossack rebellion.

Crossing the Don with this Party Secretary was a good reminder of the privileged position enjoyed by powerful officials in their own area. With the river in flood there was a long queue of vehicles waiting to cross to help with the spring sowing. Our vehicle just passed by them all and boarded the ferry without any delay.

Brian was Professor of Modern Languages (Russian) at University of Ulster 1967-82. He has written extensively on Sholokhov and carried out research in archives in London & Russia