Cement

A classic of socialist realism. Cement was the first novel to delineate the life of the people in relation to the economic policies of the Soviet state. Gleb, a heroic soldier, comes home from the revolution’s wars to a world in transition as demonstrated by the reorganization of the local cement factory for the massive national effort. His wife, Dasha, is now a leader of the Women’s Section of the Communist Party, an activist in a society where women are suddenly men’s equals. Gleb finds that he cannot easily pick up the threads of their old relationship or adjust to this new social order.

Cement is the vivid story of life in the early 1920s in the infant Soviet Union. As such, it become the model for Soviet fiction in the coming decades.