SOURCE: "Leonid Leonov's Path," in Soviet Literature, No. 484, November, 1986, pp. 143-49.

[In the essay below, Kovalyov provides a brief overview of Leonov's career and remarks on the themes of his major novels.]

Leonid Leonov is a remarkable writer, a craftsman who has left an important mark in the history of Soviet literature.

The characters he has created (Skutarevsky, Kurilov, Vikhrov, Fyodor Talanov, Vekshin, Evgenia Ivanovna, Gratsiansky, Chikelev) are comparable in stature to the major characters in Russian and world classical literature. They give an idea of this nation and its complex internal development.

Leonid Leonov was born on May 31, 1899. He matured socially in the early years of the revolution when he worked as a war correspondent.

After being demobbed from the Red Army in 1922 Leonov took up writing. He wrote stories and novellas such as Buryga, The End of a Little Man, Kovyakin's Notes, etc. From the beginning he was interested in moral and philosophical questions and invested his plots with drama and psychological insight. He revealed a penchant for complex composition and a rare gift of verbal portrayal. Critics noted the influence of the Russian realists—Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Saltykov-Shchedrin and Maxim Gorky on his writing.

Leonov's manner was extremely original: he depicted the revolution as perceived by those who stood on the side-lines of the main events and did not have a good grasp of what was happening (peasants in a remote forest village; conservatively minded metropolitan intelligentsia; a salesman in a provincial town). This oblique reflection of the time, so the writer felt, gave him a better insight into the destinies and experiences of "the little man" in the stormy years of revolutionary upheaval and into the contradictory phenomena of the post-revolutionary years.

His first novel, The Badgers, published in 1924, looked at the dramatic social cleavages in the Russian countryside after the revolution, the tragic delusions and waverings amongst some of the peasantry. The "badgers" are the peasants in a remote hamlet in the Russian hinterland who have lost their sense of direction in the face of the turbulent change that swept away age-old traditions; rejecting Soviet power, they took to the woods in order to "weather the storm". The "badgers" are led by Semyon Rakhleyev. A man of peasant stock, he had spent some time in Moscow trying, without success, to better himself socially (it was his ambition to become a merchant).

Semyon is opposed by his brother, Pavel. Like Semyon he has moved to the town in search of a livelihood. But his life takes a different turn. He gets a job in a factory where he learns of the proletarian struggle through personal experience. He becomes a commander of a Red Army unit and it is in this capacity that he encounters his brother. Pavel, who was himself a peasant not so long ago, quickly sizes up the complex situation and finds a peaceful solution to the conflict. To him, the "badgers" are not the enemies of the revolution but bewildered people who have temporarily lost their way. The image of Pavel distils the features of the hero of the time, a revolutionary, a man of great inner strength and strongly-held convictions.

The writer draws affectionate portraits of peasants, admiring their common sense, native intelligence and sharp tongues. But he does not idealise them, and he is aware of how much still needs to be done to usher the peasants into the modern age.

The Badgers brought Leonov fame in the Soviet Union and abroad (the novel was translated into German and Spanish as early as 1926).

In 1927 he published his second novel, The Thief. Like The Badgers it looks at the recent past—the first half of the 1920s. The novel is set in a Moscow suburb. Its characters include a ruined landowner, a cabaret singer, a cinema actress, a wealthy peasant (kulak), and other human flotsam of the ancient régime, as well as the underworld.

The author describes his novel as psychological. The Thief comes to grips with important social problems, such as the individual and revolution, the position of man in the complex contemporary world, contours of an emerging new morality, and so on. Maxim Gorky's influence is discernible in the author's keen interest in the human psyche, the mentality of people who have dropped out of the mainstream of life, and the broadly humanist perspective. At the same time Leonov borrowed something of the manner and artistry of Dostoevsky, and this shows in his meticulous psychological analyses. There are also echoes of some of the characters and plot motifs of his great predecessor. The novel's hero, Dmitri Vekshin, an ex-Red Armyman who used to take part in daring cavalry charges, does not understand the rationale of the New Economic Policy (NEP) launched by the Soviet government. Feeling that this would bring back all the Philistines and all the "have beens", he becomes a thief. He justifies his fall by saying that in this way he is fighting against the enemies of the revolution, the new speculators, profiteers and Philistines. Gradually and painfully, he realises the fallacy of his antisocial behaviour.

Thirty years later the author, dissatisfied with the first edition of The Thief undertook a thorough revision of the novel. He changed the overall conception and the main characters, as well as the language and style.

He takes a new look at Dmitri Vekshin. His involvement on the side of the revolution had not turned the working-class lad into a truly new person. There was a discrepancy between the humane cause for which he was fighting and his cold and arrogant attitude to people. Vekshin is a type of person who takes part in the revolution spontaneously, pursuing only personal aims and unable to grasp the great social significance and humanism of the revolution.

In the second edition greater prominence is given to the narrator, Firsov. He is an intelligent and observant person who tends to take a somewhat biassed view of things, and often interprets facts in a "literary" way. In giving us a detailed description of Firsov's approach to writing, Leonov airs some of his own views on the artistic process and formulates his principles of the philosophical-psychological novel.

The novel is full of reflections on the complex inner world of the contemporary man, the difficulties of overcoming mutual misunderstanding, alienation, fear of life, and the danger of spiritual emptiness. Leonov's vision embraces the whole predicament of man in its contemporary meaning.

It is interesting to note that when The Thief was reissued in the United States in 1968 it was the first edition that was chosen. "People there believe that writers here work on the government's orders," says Leonov. "In Berkeley a lady came up to me and exclaimed theatrically: 'Why, why did you have to alter The Thief?' She had not read the second edition, but she glibly assumed that I had changed the novel on somebody's orders."

After The Badgers and The Thief critics were inclined to regard Leonov as an artist who had found his theme. Before long, however, they had to eat their words. Leonov wrote his novel, The River Sot (1929), and the novella, Locusts (1930).

The River Sot is a socio-political novel devoted, in Leonov's words, "to the history of the clash between aggressive novelty and Russian antiquity, the history of the first encounter between the machine and the ignorant grassroots." Sot is the name of a river flowing through the boundless northern forests. The pristine silence is invaded by the noise of human voices, axes, and the roar of machines. A major factory is being built. The backward country is being industrialised, rural life is changing, and these changes undermine the influence of the local hermit monks, the custodians of old ideology and customs. The 20th century comes into conflict with the 16th. The new wins in travail and difficult struggle.

Dramatic changes in the economy were accompanied by changes in people's minds. The author showed the new world and the new man. The main character of The River Sot is the Bolshevik Uvadiev, chief of the construction project. Behind a forbidding facade, he hides tenderness and idealism: "Somewhere yonder, on a glittering horizon beneath the rainbows of the future, this crude solider saw a little girl. She was no more than ten and her name was Katya. It was for her sake that he was going into battle and facing hardship." The happiness of future generations is gained in hard day-to-day battles and work, the writer seems to say.

Gorky described the novel as a vivid example of how genuine literature had become involved with the new socialist reality and he praised Leonov's skill in composition and style: The River Sot is written with "symphonic clarity." And in 1931 Gorky gave this assessment of Leonov's skill: "From the inexhaustible wealth of our language Leonov skilfully selects the vivid and sonorous words whose magic is particularly convincing. There is hardly a superfluous word in his books. A master of his craft, he never narrates but always portrays using words as an artist uses paint."

The River Sot is a major work of socialist realism, and it begins the cycle of Leonov's novels in the thirties about the drive to build socialism and the emergence of a new mentality (Skutarevsky, The Road to the Ocean). Skutarevsky (1933) is about scientists, the Soviet intelligentsia. The central figure is Sergei Skutarevsky, a major Russian physical scientist who openly took the side of the people in the October Revolution. The novel describes Soviet scientists of the older and younger generation (Cherimov). In drawing the character of Fyodor Skutarevsky, the hero's artist brother, Leonov makes us aware of the difficult decision that faced an artist who was at first suspicious of the October Revolution. The author ridicules decadent trends in art and poetry in the 1920s. The novel offers an impressive panorama of the hectic creative atmosphere of the First Five-Year Plan, the historical optimism of the Soviet people and their confidence in the triumph of socialism.

As in his earlier works, Leonov probes into the spiritual world of his contemporaries, their mode of thinking, and their views. The reader is not told about the practical activities of the characters alone. He is given insight into their souls and their philosophy of life.

The Road to the Ocean (1935) plunges into the thick of contemporary life. The action spans two years—1933–1934. But the plot is not confined to these time limits. There are flashbacks into the past, both the recent past (the Civil War) and the more remote past (the 19th century) in search of the roots of contemporary phenomena. He traces the origins of social types and accompanies the characters in the novel in their imaginary "travels beyond the horizon" into the distant future.

The principal character, Kurilov, a member of the "Old Bolshevik Guard", is presented as the "focal character" of his time; he has tremendous moral authority over people; he is a generous, expansive man who makes easy contact with other people.

The novel has many strands. Several inherently interconnected plots develop simultaneously. There are flashbacks, the characters are described through a "stream of consciousness" technique, there are frequent rambling philosophical debates and psychological disputes. From time to time the epic narrative is broken by lyrical and topical digressions.

In the 1930s Leonov made a number of aesthetic statements. The most comprehensive of these was his speech at the First Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934. He said: "We live in an atmosphere ionised by the progressive ideas of the age. Our country today is a giant laboratory where new morality, new ethics and new socialist humanity are being forged." Leonov pointed out that art "is becoming a major instrument in the moulding of the new man". The thematic range of literature has changed in socialist society. Literature has ceased to be "a mirror of the domestic life of the individual. Today all personal concerns emerge from the privacy of the room into workshops, clubs, laboratories and into the streets." The mind of the contemporary man, stressed Leonov, can only be fully revealed by portraying him in his professional milieu, because profession is "the social drivebelt" linking the individual with his times.

The Road to the Ocean was the last novel Leonov wrote in the twenties and the thirties. The decade that followed was devoted to drama.

He wrote his first stage adaptations of his work (The Badgers, Skutarevsky) back in the 1920s and early 1930s. In the 1920s Leonov wrote the plays Untilovsk and The Taming of Badadoshkin. These were followed by Polovchansk Gardens (1937), The Wolf (1938), The Snowstorm (1940), An Ordinary Man (1941), The Invasion (1942), Lyonushka (1943), and The Golden Coach (1946).

The plays of the 1930s and 1940s reflected the atmosphere of the gathering storm in the pre-war years, and the nation's battle against fascism. Among the more popular plays were The Invasion (about the Soviet people's struggle against German occupiers in a Russian town) and The Golden Coach (about the life of a Soviet town after fascist invaders were driven out). These were much produced by theatres in the Soviet Union, as well as in France, Britain, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland, Hungary, and other countries.

During and after the Second World War, Leonov was active as a journalist and literary critic. His letters "To an Unknown American Friend" (1942–1943) evoked a wide response abroad. They are a reminder to people everywhere of their responsibility for the destinies of civilisation, a call for joint action on the part of all nations against fascism and Hitler's aggression. His articles celebrating the Great Victory were long remembered by readers.

In 1944 Pravda published his story The Storming of Velikoshumsk about Soviet military operations in the victorious closing stage of the war. The story gives close-up portraits of Soviet soldiers, officers and commanders.

In the post-war decades Leonov returned to prose-writing. The 1950s saw the publication of a sweeping epic and philosophical novel The Russian Forest (1953) and the second edition of The Thief (1959). He continues to write non-fiction (In Defence of a Friend is a piece about nature conservation. Talent and Work is about the writer's craft: A Wreath to Gorky, A Word About Tolstoy, etc. deal with the classical heritage.) In his numerous interviews published in Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, the GDR, Bulgaria, the USA, and other countries, Leonov expresses his view of the mission of art in the present era and speaks about his plans.

The Russian Forest won the Lenin Prize. In terms of structure it is similar to The Road to the Ocean, bringing together the story of the present (the first year of the Great Patriotic War) and lengthy digressions into the past; as a result, the reader gets an idea of a whole era in the history of the nation ending with the war years.

The focal conflict in the novel is between scientists who espouse different scientific ideas. One of them (Vikhrov) is concerned with nature conservation and favours a progressive scientific method of forest utilization; the other (Gratsiansky) rejects that principle and demagogically claims that it restricts the use of timber resources in the economy. The argument over a purely economic problems is just the tip of the iceberg. Behind it lies genuine concern for the nation's future in one case, and indifference to the country's destiny and the interests of the people, in the other. Locked in battle were humanism and selfish individualism; the creative spirit on the one hand and malice, envy and spiritual impotence on the other; historical optimism, strength of spirit and a decadent philosophy and the petty mentality of a loner and an outcast.

Vikhrov is a man of great ideas dedicated to the noble goal of protecting nature and increasing his country's wealth. Thinking about his mission and about the new socialist era Vikhrov wrestles with the problem, "what should be his role in it?" Having found a solution, he follows his chosen path unswervingly.

The image of the mighty forest occupying vast spaces of his great country is a symbol of the people, and its inexhaustible strength and vitality. The author makes the theme of the forest a vehicle for his ecological ideas and his philosophy of nature.

The novel treats of many other themes and problems, such as the heroism of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War; the hideous essence of fascism; the complicated moral dilemmas of the time; the spiritual maturing of youth (in the character of Polya Vikhrova).

The Russian Forest reveals Leonov's skill both as novelist and dramatist. It is not fortuitous that the novel has inspired several stage versions. It is interesting to note that the problems of the forest are considered with such scientific competence (in the fields of forestry, botany and biology) that specialists have borrowed Leonov's arguments to justify their ideas about forestry. This novel tells us more about the author's personality than any other. It reveals his vast erudition in diverse areas of modern life and history, his passionate civic commitment, his broad horizons, his ability to put the concrete problems of the Soviet Union in the context of the aspirations of the whole of mankind.

To Leonov's heart are close and dear the words of Mikhail Gorbachev spoken in his statement over Soviet television about the decision of the Government of the Soviet Union to extend the unilateral moratorium on nuclear tests till January 1, 1987 based on socialism's adherence, as a social system, to the cause of peace and its profound realisation of its responsibility for the fate of civilization.

The 1960s saw the publication of two new works by Leonov: a screenplay Mr MacKinley's Flight (1960) and a novella Evgenia Ivanovna (1963). The former is an impassioned, almost political plea for peace, the latter—begun before the war and completed in the 1960s—tells the tragic story of a young Russian woman who emigrated during the Civil War.

For a long time Leonov has been working on a major new novel. Two extracts from it, Dymkov's View of the Universe and The Last Outing (in which the author offers his models of the Universe, and shows pictures of the devastation of the earth in a hypothetical atomic war) were published in 1974 and 1979. The first of these fragments was published in a new edition in 1984. These are philosophical and futurological novellas within the novel.

Like any major artist, Leonov expresses the national traits of his people. His originality is felt in his gravitating to the realism of Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Alexander Ostrovsky and Maxim Gorky. He has the awareness of the spirit of the people and the civic commitment that have always been a hallmark of Russian classical literature. He is in love with Russia and has profound insight into the Russian national character.

Leonov's books are a wonderful wellspring of knowledge of the Russian people in the modern epoch, their heroic deeds, their love of their country, and deep feeling of internationalism. Gorky said of the young Leonov that "he has the makings of a major Russian writer, very major." We can now fully appreciate how prophetic and profoundly justified these words were.