Konstantin Aleksandrovich Fedin was one of the first Soviet writers to compose major novels that pertained to the Bolshevik Revolution and the young Soviet state. Together with Leonid Maksimovich Leonov, Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov, Dmitrii Andreevich Furmanov, and Aleksandr Serafimovich (Popov), Fedin was instrumental in defining the Soviet novel as a genre. The author of several novels, short stories, and many pieces of journalistic writing, he helped define the place of the intellectual within the turmoil that gripped Russia and the Soviet Union in the first half of the twentieth century by probing the psychological and emotional conflicts engendered by the Revolution. His early novels juxtaposed revolutionary Russia against the West; in his later works he concentrated on developing the positive Soviet hero within the framework of socialist realism. From the 1950s until the end of his life Fedin was an important official literary figure and prevented several writers...