Fyodor Vasilyevich Gladkov (; – December 20, 1958) was a Soviet and Russian socialist realist writer, best known for his 1925 novel ''

Cement A cement is a binder, a chemical substance used for construction that sets, hardens, and adheres to other materials to bind them together. Cement is seldom used on its own, but rather to bind sand and gravel ( aggregate) together. Cement mi ...

''. Gladkov joined a Marxist group in 1904, and in 1905 went to Tiflis (now

Tbilisi Tbilisi ( ; ka, თბილისი, ), in some languages still known by its pre-1936 name Tiflis ( ), ( ka, ტფილისი, tr ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Georgia (country), largest city of Georgia ( ...

) and was arrested there for revolutionary activities. He was sentenced to three years' exile. He then moved to

Novorossiysk Novorossiysk (, ; ) is a city in Krasnodar Krai, Russia. It is one of the largest ports on the Black Sea. It is one of the few cities designated by the Soviet Union as a Hero City. The population was History In antiquity, the shores of the ...

. Among other positions, he served as the editor of the newspaper ''Krasnoye Chernomorye'', secretary of the journal ''

Novy Mir ''Novy Mir'' (, ) is a Russian-language monthly literary magazine. History ''Novy Mir'' has been published in Moscow since January 1925. It was supposed to be modelled on the popular pre-Soviet literary magazine ''Mir Bozhy'' ("God's World"), w ...

'', special correspondent for ''

Izvestia ''Izvestia'' ( rus, Известия, r=Izvestiya, p=ɪzˈvʲesʲtʲɪjə, "The News") is a daily broadsheet newspaper in Russia. Founded in February 1917, ''Izvestia'', which covered foreign relations, was the organ of the Supreme Soviet of th ...

'', and director of the

Maxim Gorky Literature Institute The Maxim Gorky Literature Institute () is an institution of higher education in Moscow, Russia. It is located at 25 Tverskoy Boulevard in central Moscow. History The institute was founded in 1933 on the initiative of Maxim Gorky, a writer, foun ...

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.

Teacher, exile and revolutionary

Gladkov was born in 1883 in Bolshaya Chernavka,

Saratov Governorate Saratov Governorate () was an administrative-territorial unit (''guberniya'') of the Russian Empire and the Russian SFSR. History On December 25, 1769, the Saratov province was established as part of the Astrakhan Governorate. On January 11, 17 ...

(present-day

Penza Oblast Penza Oblast () is a federal subjects of Russia, federal subject of Russia (an oblast). Its administrative center is the types of inhabited localities in Russia, city of Penza. As of the Russian Census (2010), 2010 Census, its population was ...

) to a family of

Old Believers Old Believers or Old Ritualists ( Russian: староверы, ''starovery'' or старообрядцы, ''staroobryadtsy'') is the common term for several religious groups, which maintain the old liturgical and ritual practices of the Russian ...

. In 1904, Gladkov began propaganda work for the

Social Revolutionary Party The Socialist Revolutionary Party (SR; ,, ) was a major socialist political party in the late Russian Empire, during both phases of the Russian Revolution, and in early Soviet Russia. The party members were known as Esers (). The SRs were agr ...

in Chita, Irkutsk, joining the teachers' institute of Tiflis in the following year. In 1906 he began propaganda work for the

Russian Social Democratic Labour Party The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), also known as the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party (RSDWP) or the Russian Social Democratic Party (RSDP), was a socialist political party founded in 1898 in Minsk, Russian Empire. The ...

, and was exiled that November for four years to Manzurka village in Irkutsk province. After completing his exile, Gladkov returned to Novorossiisk and to the Kuban where he was appointed the head of a primary school in Pavlovskaya. In the spring of 1918 he returned to Novorossiisk 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 White is a racial classification of people generally used for those of predominantly European ancestry. It is also a skin color specifier, although the definition can vary depending on context, nationality, ethnicity and point of view. De ...

had been driven out, Gladkov was appointed as the head of education in the town. He would also serve in the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

, 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 ''Novy Mir'' (, ) is a Russian-language monthly literary magazine. History ''Novy Mir'' has been published in Moscow since January 1925. It was supposed to be modelled on the popular pre-Soviet literary magazine ''Mir Bozhy'' ("God's World"), w ...

'' (''New World''). Gladkov was a member of '' The Smithy'' writers group, which was engaged in polemics with the Russian 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 1921 "as an intellectual and a Menshevik" he was expelled from the Communist Party but was then reinstated after the publication of ''Cement''. In 1941 he became a special correspondent for the newspaper ''

'' and ''Pravda'', reporting from Yekaterinburg, Sverdlovsk, specialising in war-time industrial topics. After the war, he was director of the Gorky Literary Institute in Moscow. He died in Moscow in 1958 and was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery.

''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.Robert L. Busch, "Gladkov's ''Cement'': The Making of a Soviet Classic", The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 22, No. 3 (1978), p. 348

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) *''

'' (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.

References

External links

*
Biography on Soviet Lit
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gladkov, Fyodor 1883 births 1958 deaths 20th-century Russian short story writers People from Penza Oblast People from Petrovsky Uyezd Communist Party of the Soviet Union members Recipients of the Stalin Prize Recipients of the Order of Lenin Recipients of the Order of the Red Banner of Labour Novelists from the Russian Empire Soviet novelists Soviet male writers Socialist realism writers Soviet short story writers Internal exiles from the Russian Empire Soviet journalists Male journalists Russian male short story writers Russian Social Democratic Labour Party members Revolutionaries of the Russian Revolution Revolutionaries of the Russian Revolution of 1905