The Image of the Estate and Estate Life in M. Sholokhov’s “And Quiet Flows the Don”: Innovation and Reception of L. Tolstoy’s Heritage

Aim. To study M. Sholokhov’s reception of L. Tolstoy’s legacy and process the Soviet writer’s innovation in depicting the image of the estate and the estate topos in the epic “And Quiet Flows the Don”.Methodology. The article shows echoes and correlations, ideological connections between the epics of Tolstoy and Sholokhov, compares the characters and personalities related to estate life. The similarity of the estate life in both writers is noted, consisting in its closedness, isolation, the presence of an internal static order, as well as its difference, consisting in the fact that in Sholokhov we see an inexorable and unidirectional process of noble impoverishment, a depiction of historical redistribution and the last stage of estate existence. The main research methods in the work were comparative, comparative-historical, the method of holistic analysis, the axiological method.Results. Sholokhov’s creative assimilation of Tolstoy’s discoveries contributed to the fact that the young writer of the 20th century was able to take an innovative approach to the depiction of the next stage of Russian life and its turning point, show them on an appropriate scale using different degrees of specification and generalization. The work proves that the theme of estate life in its implementation in “And Quiet Flows the Don” has significant echoes with its embodiment in “War and Peace”. Many of Tolstoy’s characters allowed Sholokhov to better understand estate life and the image of a real landowner. The image of father and son Listnitsky in “And Quiet Flows the Don” became both a tribute to the estate past of Russia and a clear illustration of the final degeneration of many nobles at the stage of Russia’s participation in the First World War.Research implications. The theoretical significance of the study is associated with the understanding of Sholokhov’s creative assimilation of Tolstoy’s epic techniques, the use of the 20th century writer many images and parallels already existing in classical literature, with the latter’s unconditional innovation. Practical significance is determined by the many significant correlations of artistic worlds, an explanation of the ideas and techniques used by the writers.