The Soviet writer Valentin Vladimirovič Ovečkin is known as an author of plays, short stories and sketches. He is one among the innovators of the contem- porary Russian sketch. It is just in this genre that his literary significance is most prominent. Already before the Second World War Ovečkin wrote sketches which did not attract noteworthy interest either of readers or of literary critics. Anyhow, some of his pre-war sketches are worth mentioning, e. g.: Mistake (1935), Illness (1936), Offence (1936), A Letter from Home (1936), Disorđer (1936), Water Elf (1938), Kins- folk (1938). The author deals with old and new upheavals of the Russian village, but he dwells more on the new ones and surveys new problems that arise in kolkhozes. These sketches, more or less, passed unnoticed. The writer obtained literary popularity in his country only after the appearance of two longer stories: Praskovja Maksimovna (1939) and One of Many (1941) which form a compact whole. Ovečkin was a war correspondent during the Second World War and after the war he completely dedicated himself to literary work. In 1944 he published a successful story, A Greeting from the Front, which had the basic elements of a sketch. The author’s narration is both dynamic and attractive. It is the conver- sations of the Soviet people on the front and in the rear about their future lifeafter the end of the war. The work remains a valuable story, because it artistically describes a fatal period, the period which Europe and the remaining world will never forget. The writer obtained greater popularity in his homeland after the appearance of the book A Tiresome Spring (1956). He had been working on it for five years. The book is in fact a cycle of sketches in which the literary elements considerably prevail upon the bare current journalism. It prose submerges into the living Soviet reality. It presents, sometimes subtly and sometimes simply and clearly, all the current problems of kolkhoz life. On the other hand, it submerges into the party life of the farmers and into the relations among professional party workers, both regional and provincial. The author has advanced with this work in comparison with the old, i. e. Stalin period after the war. The book is doubtless a great con- tribution to the contemporary Soviet sketch. After the appearance of this wor k the author has become one of the greatest Russian sketch writers in Soviet literature after the war. He has been appreciated as such also by the progressive Soviet literary critics.
