Following his early death and throughout the Soviet period, the name of Dmitrii Furmanov was closely associated with the Russian Revolution and its immediate aftermath, the civil war. Characterized by many as "the poet of the revolution," he was a leading member of the first generation of a large group of Soviet writers, which included Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Fadeev, Iurii Nikolaevich Libedinsky, and Aleksandr Serafimovich (Popov), who devoted their talents to the promotion of the Bolshevik and revolutionary cause. Although the extent of his abilities as a writer was never fully realized or tested, his contemporaries attested to his considerable gifts and potential. Maksim Gor'ky reacted to the news of Furmanov's death with shock and sadness: "I have no doubt," he wrote, "that, in the figure of Furmanov, we have lost someone who would quickly have won for himself an honorable place in our literature." Like Gor'ky and many...