Dikovskii, Sergei

Born Mar. 14, 1907, in Moscow; died Jan. 6, 1940, near Suomussalmi. Russian Soviet writer.

Dikovskii’s works were first published in 1925. He fought on the Chinese-Eastern Railroad in 1929 and in the Soviet-Finnish War of 1939-40. The principal theme in Dikovskii’s novellas and short stories is the patriotic consciousness and self-sacrificing courage of Soviet man. Dikovskii’s heroes are soldiers in the Far East and frontier guards (for example, the collected stories Frontier Post N, 1932, and Adventures of the Cutter “Courageous,” 1938). His novella The Patriots (1937) contrasts the heroism of Soviet soldiers with the cruel military discipline and fanaticism of the Japanese Army. Dikovskii died at the front.