How the Steel Was Tempered
1932 novel by Nikolai Ostrovsky
How the Steel Was Tempered (Russian: Как закалялась сталь, romanized: Kak zakalyalas stal) or The Making of a Hero, is a socialist realist novel written by Nikolai Ostrovsky (1904–1936). With 36.4 million copies sold, it is one of the best-selling books of all time and the best-selling book in the Russian language.
Summary
The story follows the life of Pavel Korchagin, including his fighting in and aftermath of the Russian Civil War when he fought for the Bolsheviks during the war and was injured. The novel examines how Korchagin heals from his wounds and thus becomes as strong as steel.
The novel begins when Korchagin is 12, living in the town of Shepetovka in Ukraine. He gets kicked out of school for putting tobacco in some bread dough and must go to work as a dishwasher. As a dishwasher he is beaten by a coworker, but his brother Artyom defends him. The novel jumps forward to age 16 when he is working in a power plant. He meets a Bolshevik named Zhukhrai after a run-in with the Tsarist secret police. Zhukrai tells him about the Bolsheviks and Lenin.
“How the Steel Was Tempered” enters the record as 1932 novel by Nikolai Ostrovsky. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Steel, Tempered and novel can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“How the Steel Was Tempered” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Steel, Tempered and novel provides the most credible route into that argument.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q63707. VIAF identifies the subject as 311118732. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1904 and 1936.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.
- Identifying works and editions
- Tracing reception history
- Finding collection records
The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “How the Steel Was Tempered”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow How the Steel Was Tempered primary sources, How the Steel Was Tempered archive and Steel research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “How the Steel Was Tempered”?
- Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
- How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “How the Steel Was Tempered” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.