Anatolii Gladilin’s young heroes spoke for millions in the Soviet Union who were coming to terms with the fact that they would not become socialist heroes, or models for schoolchildren to look up to. Like millions of young people the world over, they would have to become reconciled with their own ordinariness.
Gladilin was born in Moscow, where he completed his secondary education. He studied, first in a military academy for several months, and then in the Gorky Literary Institute, but without graduating. He worked as an electrician, wrote for the Moskovskii komsomolets newspaper, and the Gorky film studio. His first novella Khronika vremen Viktora Podgurskogo [A Chronicle of the Times of Viktor Podgurskii] was published in the September 1956 issue of Iunost’, and brought him
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Citation: Lanin, Boris. "Anatolii Gladilin". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 26 April 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5900, accessed 23 November 2024.]
