The Fate of a Man

The story of Andrey Sokolov, described by Mikhail Sholokhov in the tale “The Fate of a Man,” on the basis of which a film of the same name was made, is not fiction. The main character has a real prototype: Nikita Vasilyevich Antipov, who during the Second World War was badly wounded near Kharkov and ended up in German captivity. The heroic story and the famous catchphrase “The Russians don’t munch after the first toast!” writer Mikhail Sholokhov heard from the words of Nikita Vasilyevich’s son—Nikolai Antipov, whom the writer met at the start of the 1950s in the stanitsa of Veshenskaya.