The writer is best known for his novel, "Quiet Flows the Don", with its loving portrayal of Cossack life. It is one of the books that make the most memorable description of horrors of the Civil War, which broke out after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.
The action of this Nobel-winning book for 1965 is set here, in the Rostov Region, vast steppe area stretching along the Don River.
The president had a tour of the writer's memorial house and estate, and made an entry in the Visitors' Book.
"I am sincerely glad to visit Mikhail Sholokhov's memorial estate, and thank the custodians of this outstanding museum for their selfless work. You have not merely made a collection of unique authentic objects that belonged to the great writer but re-created an inimitable atmosphere in which he wrote his immortal works," runs President Putin's entry.
The Sholokhov state museum-preserve centers round the house and estate where the writer and his family lived from 1949 into 1984. There he wrote the second volume of "Virgin Soil Upturned," the novella "The Fate of a Man" and many chapters of the novel, "They Fought for Their Motherland."
The late writer's family donated the house to the state in 1987. Two-storied, sunlit with its large windows, handsome with a veranda and several balconies, the house rose on the site of the one ruined during World War II.
All exhibits in this museum are genuine. The furniture, books, paintings and souvenirs retain the authentic look they had in Sholokhov's lifetime.
President Putin made a walk along the Don embankment, stopping to talk to villagers, and have his photos in their company taken.
Decorating the embankment is a bronze statue, six meters high, of Grigory and Aksinya, the protagonists of "Quiet Flows the Don." Sketches ready in 1957, it was cast as late as 1991. Four years later, the statue of the ill-fated lovers was installed on the embankment.
The Sholokhov birth centenary is Russia's national celebration. A jubilee festival, Sholokhov Spring, opened in the Rostov Region, May 24, to gather numerous guests in Veshenskaya.
