Fedor Abramov was one of the foremost of the derevenshchiki, or village prose writers, who were prominent in Soviet Russian literature in the 1960s and 1970s. His works are almost always set in villages in the north of European Russia, and his prose is distinguished by its consistent adherence to realism. Unlike other derevenshchiki, he does not idealize the Russian national character, nor does he mythologize the supposed moral and spiritual values of the Russian peasant. Rather, Abramov chooses to show the inner strength required to survive the onslaught of collectivization, war, and neglect that have characterized the twentieth-century history of the Soviet Russian rural community.

Abramov was born on 29 February 1920 in the village of Verkola, in Arkhangel'sk province, into the family of a peasant, Aleksandr Stepanovich Abramov. Aleksandr Stepanovich died when Abramov was still a child, and the absence of a strong father figure is a feature...