Classic writer of socialist realism who pioneered the Soviet industrial novel with Cement
This is Workers' Russia; this is us; the new world of which mankind has dreamed throughout the centuries. — from Cement
Born into an Old Believer peasant family and radicalized as a teacher and underground revolutionary, Gladkov drew on his direct experience restoring the Novorossiysk cement works during the Civil War to write Cement (1925). The first Soviet industrial novel to dramatize post-revolutionary reconstruction, depicting the ruined factory as an arena of class, gender, and bureaucratic conflict, it became a canonical text of socialist realism and the prototype of the production novel.
Career Timeline
- 1904Began propaganda work for the SR Party
- 1906Joined RSDLP, exiled to Manzurka, Irkutsk for 4 years
- 1910Head of primary school in Pavlovskaya, Kuban
- 1918–1920Served in Red Army, head of education in Novorossiysk
- 1920–1921Editor of Krasnoye Chernomorye newspaper
- 1921–1925Secretary of Novy Mir, member of The Smithy group
- 1925Published Cement — landmark of socialist realism
- 1932–1938Wrote Energy — novel of Dnieper Hydroelectric Station
- 1941–1943Special correspondent for Pravda and Izvestia (Urals)
- 1945–1947Rector of the Gorky Literary Institute
- 1949–1954Published autobiographical trilogy, won Stalin Prize twice
- 1958Died in Moscow, buried at Novodevichy Cemetery