Konovalov, Grigorii Ivanovich

Born Sept. 18 (Oct. 1), 1908, in the village of Bogoliubovka, now in Sorochinsk Raion, Orenburg Oblast. Soviet Russian writer. Member of the CPSU since 1930. Son of a peasant.

Konovalov graduated from the philology department of the Perm’ Pedagogic Institute in 1935. His first works were published in 1934. Konovalov is the author of the collections of stories In Search of a Marvelous Flower (1959), The Mountain of the Golden Eagle (1963), and The Wrath of the Meek (1969). He wrote a book of sketches entitled Under a Common Roof (1962). His novel The University (1947) deals with the struggle against bourgeois influences in science. The novels The Beacon on the Steppe (1949) and The Blade of Grass in the Field (1969) are devoted to the kolkhoz villages. One of Konovalov’s major works is the novel Sources (1959; Gorky State Prize of the RSFSR, 1970), which depicts a native Volga family before and after the Revolution and how their lives are inexorably bound to the fate of the motherland, Konovalov was awarded two orders and a number of medals.