Fyodor Vasilyevich Gladkov was a Soviet Socialist realist writer born on in Chernavka, Saratov

Saratov

-Modern Saratov:The Saratov region is highly industrialized, due in part to the rich in natural and industrial resources of the area. The region is also one of the more important and largest cultural and scientific centres in Russia...

 gubernia to a family of Old Believers

Old Believers

In the context of Russian Orthodox church history, the Old Believers separated after 1666 from the official Russian Orthodox Church as a protest against church reforms introduced by Patriarch Nikon between 1652–66...

. He died on December 20, 1958 in Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

. Gladkov joined a Communist group in 1904, and in 1905 went to Tiflis (now Tbilisi

Tbilisi

Tbilisi is the capital and the largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Mt'k'vari River. The name is derived from an early Georgian form T'pilisi and it was officially known as Tiflis until 1936...

) and was arrested there for revolutionary activities. He was sentenced to three years' exile. He then moved to Novorossiisk. Among other positions, he served as the editor of the newspaper Krasnoye Chernomorye, secretary of the journal Novy Mir, special correspondent for Izvestiya, and director of the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute

Maxim Gorky Literature Institute

The Maxim Gorky Literature Institute is a higher education institute in Moscow. It is located at 25 Tver Bulvar in Central Moscow.It was founded in 1933 on the initiative of Maxim Gorky, and received its current name at Gorky's death in 1936....

 in Moscow from 1945 to 1948. He received the Stalin Prize (in 1949) for his literary accomplishments, and is considered a classic writer of Soviet Socialist Realist literature

Socialist realism

Socialist realism is a style of realistic art which was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in other communist countries. Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style having its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...

.

Teacher, exile and revolutionary

In 1904, Gladkov began propaganda work for the Social Revolutionary party in Chita, Irkutsk, joining the teachers' institute of Tiflis in the following year. In 1906 he began propaganda work for the Bolsheviks, and was exiled that November for four years to Manzurka village in Irkust province. After completing his exile, Gladkov returned to Novorssiisk and to the Kuban where he was appointed the head of a primary school in Pavlovskaya.

In the spring of 1918 he returned to Novorssiisk to reorganise schools after the revolution in October 1917, though was forced into hiding when the Whites (pro-monarchist forces) captured the village in August of that year. In 1920, by which time the Whites had been driven out, Gladkov was appointed as the head of education in the town. He would also serve in the Red Army, before being made editor of the newspaper Krasnoye chernomorye. In 1921 he moved to Moscow where he was appointed as the head of a factory school, then secretary of the journal Novy mir (New World). Gladkov was a member of The Smithy writers group, who were engaged in polemics with the Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP). While a proponent of portraying the revolution in literature, he was anxious about the tone in which groups such as RAPP and MAPP (Moscow Association of Proletarian Writers) conducted their discussions, and the "working over" that non-RAPP writers were given in particular journals.

In 1941 he became a special correspondent for the newspaper Izvestiya, reporting from Sverdlovsk, specialising in war-time industrial topics. After the war, he was director of the Gorky Literary Institute in Moscow.

Cement (1925)

Gladkov's first major novel after the revolution, titled Cement, became a literary standard for socialist realist writing during the 1930s; in various speeches to the Writers' Congress in the USSR, Gladkov's contemporaries upheld Cement as one of the key exemplars that authors should emulate in soviet literature.

Throughout his lifetime, Gladkov rewrote passages of Cement both to suit contemporary political concerns and to fit with the Socialist Realist aesthetic established in 1932.

Published works

• Towards the Light (1900)
• After Work (1900)
• Maksuitka (1901)
• Before Hard Labour (1903)
• They Went Off To War (1904)
• The Inspection (1905)
• Three In One Hut (1905)
• The Outcasts (1908)
• The Abyss (aka The Only Son) (1917)
• Spring Shoots (1921)
• The Fiery Steed (1922)
• Cement
  Cement (novel)
  Cement is a Russian novel by Fyodor Gladkov . Published in 1925, the book is arguably the first in Soviet Socialist Realist literature to depict the struggles of post-Revolutionary reconstruction in the Soviet Union...
  
  (1925)
• The Old Secret Prison (1926)
• The Cephalopodous Man (1927)
• Energy (aka Power) (1932–1938)
• The Birch Grove (1941)
• The Scorched Soul (1943)
• The Vow (1944)
• Story of My Childhood (1949)
• The Outlaws (1950)
• Evil Days (1954)
• Restless Youth (unfinished)

English Translations

• Restless Youth, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1959.
• Cement, Northwestern University Press, 1994.