A DRAMA OF COSSACK LIFE

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 69, 14 December 1935, Page 29

A DRAMA OF COSSACK LIFE

Soviet Methods in a Don Village “Virgin Soil Upturned,” by Mikhail Sholokhov. (Loudon: Putnam. 7/-) Having made his name as a leading Soviet novelist and attracted attention all over the world by his great story of the Don Cossacks, ‘‘And Quiet Plows the Don,” Mikhail Sholokhov now carries the history of his people a stage further and depicts the transitional phase, which followed the cessation of lighting between the Bed and White armies. “Virgin Soil Upturned” has not the universal appeal which characterised the previous work. It is not concerned with the broad idiosyncrasies of the human temperament reacting to problems common to every race, and the vast emotional sweep of “And Quiet Flows the Don” is here restricted and forced within narrower limits. The problem of this story is a specialised one, and for that reason may not be .■is widely read as it deserves to be. With its self-imposed bounds it follows the traditions of the great Russian novels, marred only by the author’s tendency to treat as dogma his belief that what is good for the Soviets is therefore, without question good for all mankind. The collectivisation ,of agriculture forms the theme of “Virgin Soil Upturned.” It may not sound a promising basis on which to build up a novel, but in Mikhail Sholokhov’s hands the process becomes absorbingly interesting. To the Don village of Gremyacby

comes'Siemion Davidov, one of the 25,000 workers mobilised by the Soviet Communist Party to organise collective farms. There he begins the job of transforming the tiny agricultural association into a giant communal farm. It is difficult work, lightened by triumphant moments when it seems that the majority of the villagers will accept the collective ideal, made heavy by individual failures and occasional episodes when it seems likely that the whole scheme will collapse.

These peasants and dispossessed kulaks of whom Mikhail Sholokhov writes are real flesh and blood people, whose life springs from the. soil they tend. Their doubts and beliefs, intrigues and jealousies, loves and hates are depicted with force and conviction. These are men and women harried and bewildered by the suddenness of the change in their age-Qld manner of living, possessed by a cankerous yearning for their own property, even when they have thrown themselves heart and soul into the collective movement, and b; bitterest resentment when they are against it. As one would expect where the characters are mainly ignorant and impetuous in their passions, this is a stormy book, energetic and restless in mood, with two particularly violent scenes outstanding, one the exceptionally brutal murder of a peasant and his wife. The other a riot when excited peasants raid the communal grain store. Yet with all this unrest there is no lack of dignity about the story; there is ample breadth in the design and an unflagging strength of purpose which makes it most impressive and significant.