Leonid Maksimovich Leonov (; — 8 August 1994) was a Soviet novelist and playwright of socialist realism. His works have been compared with Dostoevsky's deep psychological torment.
Early life
Leonov was born in Moscow in 1899. His father, Maksim Leonov, was a self-educated peasant poet who was at one time the chairman of the Surikov Literary and Musical circle (Surikov was also of peasant origin). Maksim Leonov later joined the Sreda literary group of Moscow, which counted Maxim Gorky, Leonid Andreyev, and Ivan Bunin among its members.
Leonov's earliest memory was of 1905, when Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia was assassinated by the terrorist Kalyayev. In the same year, Leonov's father was arrested for two pamphlets that he had published. Leonov was taken twice by his grandmother to visit his father in prison. After serving 20 months, Maksim Leonov was exiled to Arkhangelsk. Leonov visited him there several times, and his impressions and observations were later reflected in many of his works, especially Sot.
Career
During the Russian Civil War, Leonov worked as a reporter with the Red Army. He was released from the Red Army in 1921 in order to continue his education. At that time, he planned to study painting. Upon returning to Moscow, he was unable to find any of his close relatives and acquaintances, but he was eventually accepted into the home of his uncle, a locksmith named Vasilyev. Leonov worked in his uncle's shop voluntarily in order to repay his uncle for taking him in. Later, the famous graphic artist Falilyev took an interest in him. Falilyev introduced him to some well-known literary figures and artists of the early 20s, including the publishers Solomon Kopelman (of the Shipovnik Publishing House), and Sergei Sabashnikov. After seeing some of his early stories, they both offered to publish them. This was the beginning of Leonov's professional literary career. Among his first stories were Buryga and The Wooden Queen (1923). His dark novel The Thief (1927), set in the criminal underworld of the Russian capital, was warmly welcomed by critics in Russia and abroad, but Brown considers it "spoiled in execution by the self-conscious literary poses of the author and his transparent derivation of himself from the irrationalist Dostoevsky. Leonov nonetheless performs a shrewd psychological dissection upon his main character, a disillusioned commissar who has become a member of a gang of thieves. He produced a thoroughly reworked version of this novel in 1959."
Soviet River (1930) describes the construction of a paper mill on the banks of a river in the middle of the Siberian forest; Skutarevsky (1932), "probably one of his best works in style and intellectual power, explores the psychological problems of an eminent scientist working in a socialist state and, in what is undoubtedly an autobiographical statement, traces his development from a skeptical critic of the new order into an enthusiastic supporter." In 1945, Leonov served as a correspondent for Pravda at the Nuremberg trials. He was elected as a Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union in 1950.
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Awards
- Hero of Socialist Labour (1967)
- Six Orders of Lenin