Fyodor Gladkov

Feodor Vasilyevich Gladkov was a Russian "socialist realism" writer born June 21, 1883, in Bol'shaya Chernavka, Saratov gubernia, to a family of Old Believers. He joined a Communist group in 1904, and in 1905 went to Tiflis (now Tbilisi), Georgia. He was arrested in Sretensk (Chita region, Transbaikalia) in 1906 for revolutionary activities and 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 in Moscow from 1945-48. He received the Stalin Prize in 1949 for his literary accomplishments, and is considered a classic writer of Soviet Socialist Realist literature. In 1994 "Cement" was published in the US by Northwestern University Press as part of its "European classics" series. He died on December 20, 1958, in Moscow.