Leonid Maksimovich Leonov

Leonov, Leonid Maximovich (1899–1990), Soviet dramatist, whose Untilovsk (1928), one of the first Soviet plays to be produced by the Moscow Art Theatre, was not entirely successful, though its successor Skutarevski (1934), based on his own novel and produced at the Maly Theatre, was warmly received; it deals with the problems of an elderly scientist torn between his work and his family, and between the old and new régimes. Among Leonov's later plays was the Chekhovian The Orchards of the Polovtsi (1938), which as The Apple Orchards was produced at the Bristol Old Vic in 1948. The Wolf (1939), about the impact of the Soviet régime on personal problems, was well liked; but his reputation was established by Invasion (1942), which recounts with great force and pathos the story of a Soviet village under Nazi rule. In 1957 Gardener in the Shade was produced at the Mayakovsky Theatre by Okhlopkov, and a revised version of an earlier play, Golden Chariot, was seen at the Moscow Art Theatre. The Snowstorm, first written in 1939 but officially banned, was revised and finally published in 1963.

Leonid Maksimovich Leonov , 1899-1994, Russian novelist and playwright. Leonov was a major figure in the development of psychological and social realism in the novel. His works, such as his first long novel The Badgers (1924, tr. 1925), were strongly influenced by Dostoyevsky in their complex style, psychological insight, and compassion for the downtrodden. His greatest novel, The Thief (1927, tr. 1928), treats the redemption of a former Red Army commissar who had become a bandit. Among Leonov's other novels are Sotj (1931, tr. Soviet River, 1932), Road to the Ocean (1935, tr. 1944), The Taking of Velikoshumsk (1944, tr. Chariot of Wrath, 1946), Russian Forest (1953, tr. 1966), and Sot' (1968).

Bibliography: See E. J. Simmons, Russian Fiction and Soviet Ideology: Introduction to Fedin, Leonov, and Sholokhov (1958); study by N. Rosen (1961).