Chapter Two. The Peasant-Soldier: Alexander Tvardovsky and a New Chapaev

Gladkov’s Cement took its place on what would become a long shelf of “production” novels, created according to the method of socialist realism during the Soviet interwar period. To say that most of them are dreary, forgettable, and deserve their fate now as artifacts rather than as literature is not to say very much. However, those endless production novels had attempted two things that do interest us here. First, they tried to make the very process of building a new Soviet society, and becoming new Soviet citizens, synonymous with the experience of war—fi lled with enemies to be defeated, “fronts” to fi ght on, heroic deeds to be done, and victories to be celebrated. Podvig in the service of class warfare and postwar reconstruction. In this sense, these novels surely tried to foster the health of the Soviet state. Second, the novels off ered Soviet readers heroes—heroes who engaged in extraordinary feats, fully conscious of their role in advancing the Soviet cause.1