Its character Semyon Davydov is sent to the Gremyachy Log hamlet by the Communist Party. He is a Communist, a former sailor and worker of the Putilov Plant, and a twenty-five-thousander. Twenty-five-thousanders was a collective name for the workers from the major industrial cities of the Soviet Union who were sent to rural areas to manage the newly established collective farms.

 
He meets the secretary of the local party group Makar Nagulnov and the chairman of the Village Soviet Andrey Razmyotnov. Together, they persistently win over the trust of middle-class peasants, fight against subversion and poor management, and in less than a year organize the Gremyachensky collective farm. The novel also has a romantic sub-story, more specifically, a love triangle: the main character gets into a romantic relationship with the ex-wife of his associate.

 
The first volume of “Virgin Soil Upturned” was printed in installments in the “Novy Mir” magazine in 1932. At the same time, it was published as a book by the “Federation Publishing House” in Moscow. Ten years later, “Soviet Literature” and the “State Publishing House” started releasing new print runs of the book.

 
Mikhail Sholokhov finished working on the second volume of his novel shortly before the Great Patriotic War. However, he was not able to publish it. In 1942, the manuscript, which was stored at the writer’s house, was lost during bombing attacks on the Vyoshenskaya stanitsa. Five years after the end of the war, Sholokhov resumed his work on the drafts of the novel, and in the late 1950s, he finally published its second part in the “Neva” and “Don” magazines.

 
The book was first adapted for the screen in 1939 by the director Yuli Raizman. The movie was filmed in the “Mosfilm” studio stages for almost a year. Twenty years later, another movie based on the novel was created by the “Lenfilm” studio and directed by Aleksandr Ivanov. The script was written by Sholokhov’s editor Yury Lukin and the writer’s secretary Fyodor Shakhmagonov.