SOURCE: “Three Young Writers: Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Yury Nagibin, Yury Kazakov,” in A History of Soviet Literature, translated by Mirra Ginsburg, Doubleday & Company, 1963, pp. 328-46.

In the following excerpt, Alexandrova provides a brief overview of Kazakov's work and surveys the critical reception to his short fiction.

One section of Konstantin Paustovsky's article “Thoughts, Disputable and Indisputable” (Literary Gazette, May 20, 1959), written in connection with the opening of the third Congress of Soviet Writers, was devoted to the question that troubled many minds at the time: “Do we have a talented, progressive new generation of writers, capable of real and serious work?” To illustrate the existence of such a new generation, he named Yury Kazakov. According to Paustovsky, Kazakov's work is especially moving because of “the truth and strength of his ties with the people.”

As with most of the younger writers, Kazakov's biography is not very eventful. Like Nagibin, he...