Harvest on the Don Author:Mikhail Sholokhov In Harvest on the Don, the fist novel by Mikhail Sholokhov published in the United States since 1940, Russia's foremost writer continues to tell the dramatic story of the impact of social revolution on the people of his native country. In And Quiet Flows the Don and The Don Flows Home to the Sea, Sholokhov to... more »ld of the violent and tumultuous days of the revolution and the civil wars; in Seeds of Tomorrow and in the present novel, we see the same Don village, Gremyachy Log, whose people had lived for generations according to a medieval ritual, torn from the ancient ways, then drawn to the new by their own bootstraps. (Seeds of Tomorrow and Harvest on the Don were published in Russian under the general title of Virgin Soil Upturned.) To Gremyachy Log had already come Davidov, ex-Baltic sailor, representative of the Party's drive to revolutionize a village agriculture still feudal in its methods. Factory-bred, an "old Bolshevik" at thirty-eight, he is a thoughtful, resolute man. He is also one who takes delight in human variety, in man's strengths and weaknesses, for he knows both in himself. The peasants of Gremyachy Log see a vision of a better life in the plans of this man whose inexperience often makes him the butt of both joke and plot, but they glimpse this vision through the fog of their own private hopes, greeds, jealousies and the rituals of the old ways.« less