How the Steel Was Tempered


How the Steel Was Tempered or The Making of a Hero, is a socialist realist novel written by Nikolai Ostrovsky. Pavel Korchagin is the central character.

Analysis

The story is a fictionalized autobiography. In real life, Ostrovsky's father died, and his mother worked as a cook. As he joined the war with the Red Army, he lost his right eye from artillery fire during the war.

Characters

The first part of How the Steel was Tempered was published serially in 1932 in the magazine Young Guard. The second part of the novel appeared in the same magazine from January to May, 1934. The novel was published in 1936 in book form in a heavily edited version that conformed to the rules of socialist realism. In the serial version Ostrovsky had described the tense atmosphere of Pavel's home, his suffering when he became an invalid, the deterioration of his relationship with his wife, and their separation. All of this disappeared in the 1936 publication and in later editions of the novel.
A Japanese translation of the novel was made by :ja:杉本良吉|Ryokichi Sugimoto.

Adaptations

In the Soviet Union, three films were produced based on this novel:
In China, the novel was adapted into a television series of the same title in 2000; all the members of the cast were from Ukraine.