Aleksandr Fadeev was one of the most important figures in Soviet literature during the three decades that linked the deaths of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin. As author of the immensely influential Razgrom (The Rout, 1927; translated as The Nineteen, 1929), he was later a leading figure in the literary bureaucracy--with direct access to Stalin--and played a key role in its development. During the purges of the 1930s and late 1940s he was both directly and indirectly responsible for decisions that consigned many of his colleagues and compatriots to imprisonment or worse. Despite this record, he was also known on occasion to help individual writers and their families when they were in financial, and sometimes even political, difficulties. A contradictory and complex figure, Fadeev oscillated between his compelling need to conform to the dictates of Bolshevik party discipline, and his genuine love of literature. To portray him as simply an...