Aleksandr Tarasov-Rodionov was a minor figure in the Soviet literary world of the 1920s and 1930s. He was a member of the Kuznitsa (Smithy) group of proletarian writers and one of the organizers of the Oktiabr' (October) group. Tarasov-Rodionov joined the Communist Party as a young man and attempted to follow the party line in his life and works. As a writer he is best known for his short novel Shokolad, first published in 1922 in the journal Molodaia gvardiia (Young Guard); the first book publication was in 1925, translated as Chocolate in 1932. This morality tale set during the Russian Civil War had considerable public popularity but also suffered severe official criticism as a "counter-revolutionary" work. Tarasov-Rodionov's later literary works include another short novel with a civil war setting and two volumes of a proposed trilogy of autobiographical novels describing his experiences in the Revolution. Tarasov-Rodionov was arrested in 1937 and...