SOURCE: "Leonid Leonov," in From Gorky to Pasternak: Six Writers in Soviet Russia, 1961. Reprint by Vintage Books, 1966, pp. 276-303.

A Russian-born American educator and critic, Muchnic has written extensively on Russian literature. In the following excerpt originally published in 1961, she remarks on Leonov's influences and his artistic development.

In 1932 an article on Leonov in the Soviet Encyclopedia spoke disparagingly of his early work as having been "abstract" in the manner of the Symbolists and influenced by Dostoevsky, and congratulated him on having "surmounted" Dostoevsky. Leonov, then thirty-three years old, had been publishing for about ten years. He had begun with short stories; had written a play, Untilovsk, and four novels, The Badgers, The Thief, Sot' (translated as Soviet River), and Skutarevsky, which had brought him to the attention of the public and elicited the praise of Gorky, who declared that the writing of this very gifted young man...