Author. His controversial novel "Chocolate" (1922) was a forerunner of what came to be known as "Socialist Realism" in Soviet Literature. Set during the Russian Civil War (1917 to 1922), it is a cautionary tale about a local police chief who, out of pity, pardons a prostitute he has arrested. In gratitude she gives his wife some chocolate she had gotten from a suspected English spy. Because of this the chief is later executed for taking bribes and "collaboration with a class enemy". Although it had scant literary merit, the book shocked many readers because it appeared to argue that there was no place for such "outmoded" feelings as pity in building a Socialist State. His other novels include "Blood and Grass" (1924), "Heavy Step" (1927), and "February" (1928). Tarasov-Rodionov was born in Astrakhan and studied law at Kazan University. He joined the Communist Party in 1905 and played an important political role in the 1917 Revolution and ensuing Civil War. During the 1920s he was a leader of the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP), which demanded artless propaganda for the people instead of literature, and denounced other writers (notably Yevgeny Zamyatin and Boris Pilnyak) for failing to agree with its aesthetic. After dictator Josef Stalin began tightening his grip on power in the 1930s, Tarasov-Rodionov became a victim of the same political ruthlessness he had espoused. The RAPP was abolished in 1932 and its leaders reprimanded; four years later he was expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers as an alleged sympathizer of Leon Trotsky. In 1938 he was arrested, convicted of treason, and shot at the Kommunarka killing field outside of Moscow. His reputation was rehabilitated after Stalin's death.