[One of the former Soviet Union's most popular authors, Gorky is considered one of the framers and foremost exponents of Socialist Realism. In the following essay, which was originally published in 1932, Gorky remarks on Leonov's artistic development.]

I am not a critic and I do not feel inclined to 'explain' an artist; I well remember that when critics undertook to 'explain' me, they attributed to me intentions of which I was innocent and deeds I had never done. All that is said below is just a note by an old writer on his young comrade-inarms—though of another generation. It is neither censure, nor is it praise, it is merely an attempt to tell how I see Leonid Leonov.

He is one of the most prominent of the group of modern Soviet authors who are continuing the task of Russian classical literature—the task of Pushkin, Griboyedov, Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky and Leo Tolstoy. It is early yet to speak of the power of his talent—that power, like every other, develops through exercise. Nobody could have foreseen that Dostoyevsky, the author of a weak and even pitiful story Poor People, would ever become capable of writing the caustic Notes from the Underworld, or of creating The Brothers Karamazov. Leo Tolstoy's Childhood did not make it possible to foretell that one day he would create War and Peace.

None the less, it seems to me already that Leonov's powers are increasing with remarkable rapidity, and that, from The Badgers to The Thief and from The Thief to Soviet River, the distance he has covered is so great that I, for my part, know no instance of such rapid and indisputable growth in our old Russian literature. This growth is indicated by the complexity of the subjects he now handles with bold assurance, as well as by the increasing euphony of his language, the individuality of his style. He is particularly successful in his development of stylistic technique, and every new story, every new book he writes, strikes a more and more convincing note. While The Thief sometimes gives us the impression of being over-burdened with words—Soviet River is written in a language of symbolic harmony.

The word, clothing of truth and falsehood, characterises a man just as does the deed—and Leonov endows each of his heroes with a strongly-emphasized, individual manner of speech. Not every gifted author succeeds in this. Leonov deftly chooses from the inexhaustible riches of our language precisely those words of which the illustrative and musical magic is most convincing, excluding from among them every superfluous element. Master of his art, he hardly ever describes, he always draws pictures, using words as a painter his paints. His style lacks the hysterical hastiness of Dostoyevsky, so popular with many, a hastiness which often makes the dialogues of his heroes seem to their reader like an incessant clamour of the afflicted. More and more frequently in Leonov's pattern do we encounter the powerful strokes of Leo Tolstoy, strokes by means of which Tolstoy achieved, with such great pains, such magnificent plasticity of illustration. If we may say of Tolstoy that he 'forged his books out of iron'—and of Turgenev that he cast his out of copper and silver—then Leonov must be regarded as operating with a very complex alloy of metals. In his descriptions of landscape often echoes Tyuchev's 'nature-lyricism,' while in the delineation of his figures we can perceive the sharp, acute precision of Lermontov's prose. In a word—Leonov is a bee who gathers his honey from all the flowers that abound in it.

Quite consciously do I measure Leonov by so high a standard, quite consciously place him in one rank with the greatest figures of our old literature—Leonid Leonov himself forces one to approach him thus with the highest claims.