Patriotic principles in the work of M.A. Sholokhov

Shagbanova Khabiba Sadyrovna ORCID: 0000-0001-5549-4819 Doctor of Philology Assistant professor, Professor of the Department of General Humanitarian Disciplines, Law Institute (St. Petersburg) 199106, Russia, Saint Petersburg, Gavanskaya str., 6 khabiba_shagbanova@list.ru Other publications by this author

"A lot of interesting, good, bright things have been said about Sholokhov the artist," this is how F.G. Biryukov begins his article "Again about Melekhov", which was published in one of the issues of the Novy Mir magazine for 1965 ^{[2, p. 236]}.  The multifaceted work of M.A. Sholokhov is a bright page in the chronicle of the creative path traversed by our compatriots in the twentieth century.  Researchers correctly note that the writer sought to epically and deeply capture the foundations of human existence — what, in his opinion, the world rests on ^{[8, p. 4]}. The literary characters of Sholokhov's works are personalities from the Soviet past, an era filled with difficult events that put the Soviet people before one or another difficult public choice. These were difficult years of state-building and the search for ways to solve social hardships, disorders accompanied by human tragedies. N.D. Kotovchikhina quite rightly says that M.A. Sholokhov reflected this tragedy of the century through the fate of heroes to the greatest extent of all Russian writers of the XX century ^{[7, p. 13]}.

The motivic organization of Sholokhov's work reveals a single narrative plan, represented by invariant and variant models, objectified to identify components of the philosophical, semantic and moral order. The unified plan of expression registers the drama and changes affecting the foundations of society at the individual and social level in the context of secularization. The behavior of the characters of the writer's works, considered in the context of the patriotic ideological paradigm, demonstrates the relevance of the binary opposition of the material and moral, spiritual, which determines the narrative motives. The writer attempts to synthesize the original and universal, universal in the multidimensional space of axiological coordinates of the value picture of the world.

During the years of the life of the master of the artistic word, fateful phenomena fell out for our country. At this time, as V.K. Sigov rightly notes, there is another social breakdown, revolution, civil war, and most importantly collectivization ... the destruction of traditions of spiritual life ^{[13, p. 390]}. M.A. Sholokhov reflected in detail many of these and other turning events of our recent history in his works. The spirit of patriotism inherent in the people of that time was of the utmost importance in such social achievements and overcoming. Already the works of early creativity are marked by an appeal to the problems of such aspects of patriotic self-awareness as sacrifice and mercy, brotherly love and mutual assistance, understanding of truth, fate, will and freedom, which constantly find themselves in the center of the plot and appeal to the archetype of their native land. Sholokhov's prose, both in content and in formal terms, illustrates the organic connection of the characters of the main characters with nature, with the Russian land through a combination of its thematic and motional elements, where patriotism is one of the main ones.

The leitmotif of the writer's work is the theme of the difficult fate of the Fatherland, his small homeland — the "Don region", as well as his fellow countrymen. E.S. Knyazeva draws attention to the fact that the character of the character is formed in the confluence of a variety of circumstances, but above all in the existence of an inextricable relationship of man with nature, his native land, as well as with the events taking place in the surrounding reality" ^{[6, p. 19]}.  All this allows us to consider in detail M.A. Sholokhov's understanding of patriotism, its manifestations in peacetime and wartime, the ratio of "personal" and "collective" aspects in the heroes' love for their homeland. The patriotic understanding of reality as one of the fundamental artistic and compositional dominants functions in conjunction with addressing the problem of a person's life path and destiny both in an existential and in a spiritual and philosophical aspect. The hero's perception of his life path as an integral part of the fate of the Fatherland, its continuation, is formed in interaction with such meaningful components as the path, light, the struggle of good and evil, developing and complicating the semantics of the original archetype.

Within the framework of this article, the creative legacy of one of the outstanding writers of the twentieth century is considered in close connection with the historical context that accompanied and largely inspired the writing of works of fiction. There are four distinct stages in Mikhail Alexandrovich's work. These are, first of all, Sholokhov's early stories about the "Don Region" — the author's tribute to his small Homeland, the epic novel "The Quiet Don" as a monumental description of the vicissitudes of the Civil War, the novel "Raised Virgin Land", which tells about the life of citizens of the Soviet Union after the civil war, about government measures to restore the state's economy. Finally, the fourth period is a collection of the so—called "military works" by Sholokhov, which are set during the Great Patriotic War - these include the works "They Fought for the Motherland", "The Science of Hatred" and "The Fate of Man". The motif of love for the Motherland reflects a set of moral, moral and spiritual values, organizes the semantic structure of plot and compositional elements, attributing the fabric of the narrative with references to natural-spatial, vital, objective images and metonymic-metaphorical transfers.

M.A. Sholokhov's Don stories are devoted to the fates of people who mainly lived in his small homeland. The prototypes for Sholokhov's characters were, for the most part, real people. It is noteworthy that the author was familiar with all of them one way or another himself — this fact explains the high degree of realism of the writer's work. The time period in which the stories about the "Don region" take place covers the period of the end of the Civil War and the first years after its completion, when the region and individual settlements changed hands, were robbed by numerous bandit formations, and experienced significant economic difficulties. It is in this atmosphere that the characters of the writer's short stories and novels are depicted, many of whom find inner strength in order to preserve human dignity, remain true to their own beliefs, show prudence, compassion and mercy.

The cycle "Don stories" consists of ten works. It is important to note that the vast majority of them represent either the stories of families jointly experiencing disasters and the loss of loved ones as a result of the Civil War, or the fate of people separated due to political beliefs. So, in the center of the plot of the story "Mole" is the fate of the Red Army commander Nikolka Koshevoy. Closer to the denouement, he learns that his missing father actually turns out to be the chieftain of a local gang of bandits on the Upper Don. The detachments of father and son meet in an armed confrontation, where the main character tragically dies at the hands of his own father. He, having identified his son in the commander of the Red Army, commits suicide. The topic of family split due to the participation of related people in opposing detachments is far from new in Russian literature — a similar plot is depicted in N.V. Gogol's novella "Taras Bulba". But if Taras Bulba kills his son quite deliberately, then in the "Birthmark" it remains a mystery to the reader whether Nikolka's father would have done such an act, knowing that the commander of the Red Army is his son.

It should be noted that the sides of the civil war in the cycle of stories are presented quite expressively and, according to critics, without prejudice to the plot and realism of the narrative of the work, it is impossible to abandon these plot and compositional elements. The author deliberately refuses to make any of the parties to the conflict bearers of the ultimate truth: the main message that runs through a number of stories in the cycle is emotional and unreasonably cruel decisions that a person is able to make (even in relation to his relatives) under the influence of external circumstances are quite possible, but they will later have to be bitterly regretted. Patriotism as a commitment to political ideals motivated by activities for the benefit of the state (whether they are "white" or "red"), the author is not ready to put patriotism above love for loved ones, compassion and forgiveness ^{[20, p. 66]}.

In this regard, the question naturally arises — is the manifestation of patriotism exhausted for the author only by love for the Motherland? The answer to this question is in the story "The Azure Steppe". The main character is grandfather Zakhar, kind, who does not want to offend any creature. His grandchildren, who drove the lord out of his possessions and participated in the redistribution of land, were convicted by the lord's son and should be executed.  A.I. Metchenko notes the "servility" of grandfather Zakhar at this moment — he begs the son of pan to spare his grandchildren, but this does not achieve anything. The critic sees in the symbolism of the environment signs that, in the author's opinion, the surrounding world is not yet adapted "for complacency and forgiveness" ^{[10, pp. 26-27]}. The author also leaves the question of whether the peasants could resist the punitive detachment of the son of a gentleman open to the reader, once again emphasizing the inconsistency of the situation and the uncertainty of the prospects for the development of the storyline.

It is in these works that M.A. Sholokhov's reception of patriotism as a phenomenon existing in two dimensions is formed. On the one hand, patriotism manifests itself in love for loved ones, in compassion for people regardless of their views, and on the other hand, patriotism means a person's commitment to his own views on what his Homeland should look like, their implementation in practice, and willingness to defend them with weapons in his hands. Thus, the author proposes to interpret the phenomenon of patriotism as a contradictory phenomenon capable of generating internal, interpersonal or group conflict.

The epic novel "The Quiet Don" is the most striking literary work by M.A. Sholokhov. N.M. Muravyova writes that works of such a scale as "The Quiet Don" change the criteria of values, affect people's consciousness, force them to reconsider the established boundaries of knowledge, the starting point in assessments and ideas about the world and man ^{[11, p. 3]}. Researchers write about this masterpiece of fiction of the twentieth century as the most vivid work about the Cossacks that exists today ^{[12, p. 253]}. The novel fully reveals the theme of "man and war".  The true protagonist from a philosophical point of view is not Grigory Melekhov, but the people (the Don Cossacks), who suffered the terrible events of the First World War and the Civil War.

The Cossacks in the mass consciousness seem to be an exclusively militant class, for whom war is almost the meaning of life. M.A. Sholokhov gives us a completely different picture, largely due to the fact that he is directly familiar with the Cossacks "from the inside". For Sholokhov, the Cossacks are a hardworking people, tied to their native land, which they have been carefully cultivating for centuries ^{[1, p. 20]}. Despite all the changes that happened to Gregory's colleagues during the battles, some of them turned into cruel killers, some were internally broken, but all of them had a single, binding feature — an irresistible craving for their native expanses. This topic is illustrated by the difficult life path of G. Melekhov — despite all the vicissitudes of the Civil War, the hero aspired to his father's house, to his relatives. Grigory Melekhov's love for his native land is shown through an impulse to liberate the Cossack lands captured by the Red Army.

The conflict between the spiritual and the sensual is expressed in the search for truth, in overcoming contradictions, reflecting on the truth in a dialogue with the old Cossack Grishaka, a representative of the national, naive consciousness, for whom the truth correlates primarily with the will of God. In this context, the author interprets patriotic understanding as justice, which is the basis for the entire universe and embodies a spiritual force capable of overcoming difficulties at the limit of its capabilities, sometimes on the verge of life and death. In Sholokhov's prose, the hero's awareness of himself as part of the Motherland is presented in various configurations and variants: in everyday, everyday, folklore, tributary, etc., where a derivative motive is actualized — the motive of responsibility for another, for all, which indicates his role as one of the main, plot-forming and organizing ideological and expressive contour and figurative the potential of the work.

The pages of the work reflect, perhaps, all the hardships that war can be associated with — violence and looting, murders, losses of relatives and friends, splits among neighbors and family members, revenge, grief ^{[3, p. 10]}. These events change people physically and mentally. Describing Grigory Melekhov's colleagues during the campaign of the First World War, Sholokhov masterfully demonstrates the connection between changes in human morality in the war, emphasizing them with descriptions of external changes. The war leaves indelible wounds in the soul of everyone who comes into contact with its hardships and hardships, and therefore it is not easy to return to the old life; this is the author's vision of the problem of "man at war", where the main thing, according to Sholokhov, is to preserve the inner core despite the tragic events taking place around ^{[15, p. 19]}. That is why Grigory Melekhov does not find a place for himself either among whites, reds, or rebels.

Grigory is an exemplary Cossack by nature. The main and, perhaps, his only attachment, which passed with him through the entire work, is his native expanses, family and close people. Despite the fact that the hero found military glory, which was not awarded to everyone, he managed to distinguish himself, he is not a born military man, war for him is only external events, the personification and natural result of internal, spiritual processes taking place in society.

The final point in the military period of Grigory's life, when he refuses to continue participating in the conflict, is the episode when he sinks a rifle and a revolver and meets with his son Mishatka. The reflection of the feeling of love and devotion to the native land in M. Sholokhov's creative heritage is formed through a whole bunch of macro- and micro-motives, motives-actions, motives-characters, motives-results. The motive of patriotic comprehension of the events taking place is one of the foundations of the plot of the novel, which assimilated the idea of human destiny, which consists in goodness, the pursuit of justice and truth. The hero's comparison of his fate and the fate of his native land is due to the author's use of the image-bundle "the ability to remain human", which, like a litmus test, marks the qualities of a character's soul, his ability to distance himself from the hustle and bustle, to direct his gaze towards truth and light.

The patriotism of the heroes is subjected to large—scale tests - first the First World War, and then the brutal fratricidal Civil War. In the very epigraph to the work ("In the year of turmoil and debauchery / Do not condemn, brothers, brother") the problem of choosing life guidelines is already being voiced, where patriotism is evaluated both through the prism of love for a small homeland, relatives and friends, and through the choice of one of the lines of political struggle in the country. In literary studies, there is a point of view about sacrifice as one of the main features of a feat in general ^{[17, p. 25]}, as loyalty to personal principles and willingness to defend them. The character of Grigory Melekhov behaves like a patriot: he is faithful to his land, takes part in the resistance to the detachments of the Red Army, wherever he is, he is drawn to his native expanses of the Don region.

For Grigory, the war is primarily a disaster and a personal tragedy, he is tormented by nightmares with the memory of actions that he had to commit and see at the front. The main character bears the heavy burden of the war and at the same time finds the strength to intensively analyze the situation, evaluate the behavior of colleagues and opponents in the context of morality and morality, remember relatives and take care of them at every opportunity. Melekhov fights on one side or the other, but nowhere does he find the totality of those moral imperatives for which he would be ready to fight until the end of the conflict. According to Sholokhov himself, true humanism lies in the struggle, the constant search for the truth. Grigory experiences an internal contradiction between his "patriotism of the small Motherland" and the ideological attitudes of the opposing sides, the actions of both the Bolsheviks and the White Guards.

The chronotopic components of the plot were chosen by the author for a reason and contain a certain semantic load, sometimes deeply symbolic: the Melekhov farm is located on the very edge of the village, overlooking the Cretaceous ridge of the mountain, the Hetman's highway, to the north, being the center of a number of directions, symbolizing a certain point at which life and death, good and evil, readiness converge fight to the end and worry about the future. The preamble with the Melekhov court serves as an exposition motif, explicating the invariant scheme of the fate of the Melekhov family, accompanied by a number of motifs. The chronotope motif performs a plot-forming function, produces a system of semantic connections, contributes significantly to the emergence of a cross-cutting image of the main character, a patriot, combining artistic and aesthetic reality in its narrative aspect and the depiction of reality through a model of patriotic behavior. The central motif is enriched with ontological meanings: the Don is not only a river, but also an image of the monumentality of existence and eternity, personifying birth, purification, salvation from adversity and storms of the outside world.

The action of the novel "The Raised Virgin Land" also takes place in the Don region. If the works considered earlier described the events of the civil war and the first post-war years, then this one tells about the development of virgin lands since 1930. Against this fundamentally different historical background, the theme of patriotism is considered by the author in the light of collective and proprietary. The Cossack lands, tired of the surplus, meet with the Bolshevik avant-garde and collectivization. According to what was said earlier, patriotism is considered by Sholokhov, first of all, as love for his native land and close people, and the apogee of the manifestation of devotion to the Motherland is social work on earth. At the same time, the writer offers a search for an answer to the question, what does the concept of "native land" include? Do livestock, poultry, and products produced by the hard work of local residents belong to this general concept? This is exactly one of the key problems of the work — with the advent of collectivization, under threat of coercion, the inhabitants of the farm have to trust the party asset, giving away part of the property and not receiving any guarantees in return (many are sure that nothing but universal hunger will come out of socialist land use).

Another aspect of patriotism according to M.A. Sholokhov is revealed here, namely, the willingness to sacrifice not life in military conditions, but personal property in peacetime. In other words, a patriotic person's willingness to sacrifice is manifested not only in extreme situations, but also in everyday actions. Such sacrificial behavior throughout the story turns out to be quite rare — some people are more likely to take up arms and commit rash and cruel acts, just to find illusory peace and material well-being. The characters are artfully depicted by the author in all the variety of their contradictory qualities. The reader's true compassion is likely to be aroused only by some minor characters.

Another key topic that is touched upon by Sholokhov and is also related to the author's understanding of patriotism is the topic of passivity of the masses. With the arrival of party activists to the farm, their agitation finds support only from a small part of the villagers, most of the residents are reluctant to go to work in the field. But even after activists set the pace of work by personal example and introduce innovative techniques in agriculture (weeding bread), the influx of villagers to the collective farm remains weak, and the mass of people seek to knock out an extra day of rest for themselves, not caring about their own well-being in the future, at the same time a narrow circle of local residents, including Ostrovnov and Polovtsev, is planning a counterrevolutionary rebellion. The majority of local residents remain passive, striving to preserve property and established foundations. The author, in turn, does not clearly demonstrate support for any of the social groups. One of the most striking characters, whose behavior model is closest to the patriotic one, is the hero of the second plan — the blacksmith Shaly. Shaly not only helps the local collective farm with repairing a huge number of harrows and plows by the right time, but also actively participates in the life of the farm during the work, takes an active, active civic position, gives farmers useful advice. Once again, M.A. Sholokhov's model of a patriotic man is a hero who maintains neutrality in the confrontation of conditional "red" and "white", follows his inner beliefs, seeks the truth, is active and cares about the common good, about his native farm.

The master of artistic expression is also known for describing the events of the Great Patriotic War in the novel "They Fought for the Motherland", the stories "The Fate of Man" and "The Science of Hate". An article in the newspaper Pravda dated May 13, 1945, "Victory, which history did not know", is also important for revealing the patriotic principles of the Soviet people during the difficult years of the war years ^{[4, p. 97]}.

Patriotism in these works is also revealed in extreme conditions — during retreats at the front and in captivity of the enemy. In the center of the novel "They fought for the Motherland" is a combat unit of the first years of the war, which has to retreat deep into the country with heavy battles. The retreat is difficult for soldiers — many of them pass through settlements unable to look into the eyes of local residents, and some of the residents, in turn, consider the retreating traitors and refuse to help. At a certain point in the narrative, the wounded soldiers ask the commander to allow them to follow the unit's re-formation instead of retreating and return to the front. At this point, the author makes it clear that patriotism includes the ability to lose, draw conclusions and find the strength to continue the fight ^{[5, p. 362]}. The wounded soldiers needed treatment and recovery and would not be able to fight back against the enemy, but the reformed unit with fresh forces would be ready to fight valiantly and effectively.

"The Science of Hate" tells about the fate of Lieutenant Viktor Gerasimov, who went through the inhuman conditions of German captivity and saw all the horrors of the German invaders. The war turned an ordinary Siberian mechanic into a calloused soldier full of hatred for the enemy. But Gerasimov himself argues that hatred alone cannot be enough to win — only by being inspired by love for the Motherland, for your people, you can defeat the enemy. The narrator's interest in Gerasimov arose during the episode when the lieutenant shouted at a Soviet soldier guarding two fascists. He was too relaxed, for which he was shouted at by the lieutenant. The author of the story illustrates the evolution of the main character from a benevolent attitude towards others (and even the enemy) to hatred. The portrait of a patriot in this work is characterized not by blind hatred, but by a noble impulse, a pronounced concentrated desire to defeat the monstrous Hitler regime, which has corrected all imaginable ideas about human dignity and humanity.

"The Fate of Man" continues the theme of patriotism: the main character, Andrei Sokolov, is captured by the Nazis and spends more than two years there. One of the most memorable moments is when Andrei committed his first murder. When the captured fellow soldiers were locked in the church, there was a traitor among them who wanted to extradite the political officer, but was killed, and none of the remaining prisoners were executed. In this case, the theme of patriotism correlates with the antithesis of "collective" and "proprietary" in the "Raised virgin land". Patriotism, therefore, appears primarily as a willingness to sacrifice personal interests and well-being for the sake of the collective good ^{[9, p. 496]}. It is noteworthy that Sokolov's dedication and high moral principles are noted even by the Germans when he refuses to take food from their hands before his own execution. They appreciate the courageous behavior of the hero, although he, in fact, is neither an infantryman nor a career soldier in general, he is a military chauffeur. This indicates that true patriotism manifests itself not only in the context of hostilities, but also at the level of interpersonal communication. Patriotism in this case is represented by a set of personal beliefs, principles and ideals, which the main character is guided by even in the most seemingly hopeless situation.

Summing up, we note that the theme of patriotism in Sholokhov's work crystallized throughout his work. Being a direct participant in the fateful events in the history of our country, Mikhail Alexandrovich skillfully noted and described manifestations of patriotism in a variety of life situations, at the same time emphasizing the variety of ways to show love and loyalty to the Motherland. The versatility and depth of the concept of "patriotism" were noticed and emphasized in their work by many writers and poets of the war years ^{[18, p. 352]}.

In the stories about the "Don region", Sholokhov already identifies two levels of patriotism — "basic", as love for a small homeland, relatives and close people, as well as "ideological", as the presence of beliefs and ideals regarding the structure and image of the Motherland in the future. The author leaves space for the reader to interpret for himself, however, he rather emphatically identifies two aspects, of which the first shows their best features in the characters, while the second in the vast majority of cases leads to schism, conflicts and fratricidal fights. The horrors of both the First World War and the Civil War are described — Grigory Melekhov is awarded the fame of a fearless and valiant warrior, but it does not bring him happiness. The main character does not find himself either in the camp of the "reds" or in the camp of the "whites", and eventually returns to the life of a Cossack farmer. Otherwise, patriotism is comprehended in the work "Raised virgin land". In this novel, patriotism lies in the willingness of people who live by their work to sacrifice their personal well-being for the sake of the collective.

Finally, M.A. Sholokhov's military prose shows patriotism in a different way. The writer is not alien to the feeling of hatred for the enemies of the Motherland, but only if it is not animal, but reinforced by a sense of love for the Motherland and the people ^{[14, p. 198]}. Thus, the phenomenon of patriotism is most closely connected with the concept of Homeland and Fatherland. Sholokhov's literary legacy reflects the embodiment of patriotic self-awareness in the socio-cultural space at the level of family and social life. The understanding of the surrounding reality from the perspective of the perception of the Fatherland as one of the worldview dominants is conditioned by the imperative of active, creative human activity. The author's works reveal especially acutely the qualities of an individual in difficult and sometimes critical conditions (war, poverty, hunger), and in these difficult circumstances a person shows his true face. M.A. Sholokhov was able to skillfully depict the impulse of the soul to act for the benefit of the Motherland, the search for answers to questions about the truth, about the role of the common man in the life of the state.

The fate of the Fatherland in the writer's work is inextricably linked with the fate of the main characters. Texts created with a deep knowledge of everyday life, life, worldview and principles, through their functional and stylistic organization emphasize the perception of events in the outside world inseparably from such archetypes as earth, fire, water and nature in general. The patriotic component of M.A. Sholokhov's literary heritage is represented both by traditional images (the earth is the mother, the Don is the father, the month is the young Cossack) and by deep genetic connections of the writer's artistic style with layers of national consciousness.

Sholokhov's interpretation of the patriotic attitude of his native land is associated with the unity and rapprochement of man and the world and the illustration of this relationship in the description of everyday life, social status and personal qualities. The love of the land of the fathers in the works of the author is associated not only with the historical past, but also with the work of a farmer, fisherman, hunter. Individual author's epithets tell about the importance of the Fatherland as a harmonious and balanced system with a description of spiritual and ethnic processes, a set of binary oppositions (life - death, white — black, etc.) interacting with micro— and macro-context and motivating positively or negatively the connotative aspect of the meaning of the word.

The phenomenon of patriotism, represented through a complex of artistic and visual means and the expansion of the associative meanings of existing words, along with the aesthetic and semantic construction of a specific narrative text-forming system, is presented as a space in which the originality of the national character, personal qualities and spiritual aspirations of a person are realized. The paradigm of patriotic self-awareness is characterized not only by the graded and emotional evaluation of characters and objects, but also by an appeal to the conceptual, pragmatic and associative-figurative field of the variety of elements used in the work.

The concept of "patriotism" in the work of M.A. Sholokhov includes in its structural and content space such semantic microfields as willpower, character traits, moral manifestation of the essence of a person, the attitude of a person to the assigned task. In the Sholokhov system of symbols, the idea of the importance of nature and the surrounding world as part of the native land prevails, largely determining the historical and social existence of a person and his patriotic imperatives. The fates of the heroes demonstrate the high importance of love for the Motherland in the context of the narrative about family, about family ties, about overcoming difficulties. Despite the fact that the description of the self-consciousness of the people is presented as an auxiliary element of the artistic world, nevertheless, it gives a special flavor and organizes ideological and emotional-psychological diversity, which allows us to consider the patriotic type of behavior of certain heroes through the prism of humanity, perseverance, preservation of the dignity of the human person. In the novel "The Quiet Don" Grigory Melekhov rethinks the essence of the merciless and senseless blazing civil war in the categories of native and foreign land. The patriotic model of worldview is one of the central symbols that transcend spatial and temporal boundaries, marking by its universal nature the problems of the moral and antinomic order.

The structure of patriotism, considered in the presented article through a dialectical approach, states the multifaceted relationship between internal and external definitions — categorization and group intensification — through which the problematic of the concept of "patriotism" in modern social and humanitarian knowledge is revealed. Patriotism as a discursive formation is expressed through the objectification of a view of the world in the categories of morality and human dignity, mediated by ethnocultural, social, natural and geographical factors and associated with their appeal to higher spiritual and moral values.

M.A. Sholokhov's extensive and multifaceted literary heritage will be in demand by interested readers at all times. The enduring value of the writer's prose is also present in the fact that his works are relevant in terms of patriotic education of young people with the help of the artistic word ^{[19, p. 143]}. The visual means of expressing patriotic ideas used by the Master make these works heart-warming and leave no one indifferent ^{[16, p. 4]}.