Vadim Nikolaevich Sobko

Born May 5 (18), 1912, in Moscow. Soviet Ukrainian writer. Member of the CPSU since 1940.

Sobko began publishing in 1930. He graduated from the department of philology at the University of Kiev in 1939 and worked on army newspapers during the Great Patriotic War (1941-45).

Sobko first gained fame with the trilogy Star Wings (1937-50). Many of his works have dealt with war and the defense of peace, for example, the trilogy Path of a Star (1943–47; Russian translation, 1959) and the novels Distant Front (1948), Pledge of Peace (1950; State Prize of the USSR, 1951), Madonna (1973), and Bare Mountain Ridge (1974). Several novellas and the plays Behind the Second Front (1949) and Life Begins Anew (1950) are devoted to the same themes. The constructive labor of the Soviet people and the moral and ethical problems of the postwar period are reflected in the novels The White Flame (1952), The Stadium (1954), Ordinary Life (1957; Russian translation, 1960), We Only Dream of Rest (1959), Matveev Bay (1962), A Stern Friend (1963), First Drops of Rain (1968), Legion of Honor (1970), and Likhobor (1973). Sobko’s works are marked by interesting and dynamic plots.

Sobko has been awarded seven orders and several medals.