Ermolaev is one of the most competent specialists in the history of the Don region and the Don Cossacks, and he is obviously one of the best Western experts on M. A. Soloxov and F. D. Krjukov. This of course makes his remarks and conjectures especially valuable [see excerpt above].

However, not all of Ermolaev's observations are equally convincing. He agrees with me, for example, that the novel Podnjataja celina (Virgin Soil Upturned) is incomparably weaker as a work of art than Tixij Don (The Quiet Don). The level of volume 2 of Virgin Soil Upturned (1960) is especially low in quality, as are the chapters published at the end of the war and the still unfinished novel Oni srazaliś za rodinu (They Fought for Their Homeland, 1943–44). "However," Ermolaev notes, "even in the works written after The Quiet Don one finds incomparable descriptions of the Don countryside which could belong...