SOURCE: “The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon,” in Boris Pil'niak: A Soviet Writer in Conflict with the State, McGill-Queen's University Press, 1975, pp. 20–51.

In the following essay from her full-length study, Reck examines the controversy surrounding the creation and publication of Pilnyak's most renowned works.

An ear cocked for the rumours, an eye on the papers, which in the first days of November were filled with accounts of Frunze's death, biographical articles, and reminiscences of friends and comrades in arms, Pil'niak set about writing The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon.¹

As time was to show, the story marked the beginning of the end for its author, although the end was still over a decade away.

To say that the Tale was inspired by Frunze's death and the rumours surrounding it is to understate the case. The events of real life—actual and rumoured—were the stuff of which the...