Yevgeny Schwartz: The Fate of a Storyteller in the Age of the Dragon

Yevgeny Schwartz wrote fairy tales that were, in many ways, more realistic than the Soviet novels of his time. In plays such as The Shadow and, above all, The Dragon, he offered a remarkably prescient exploration of tyranny and the psychology of submission, anticipating what would later be described as the "banality of evil"—the everyday habit of living alongside oppression and accepting it as normal.
In an age marked by upheaval and loss, Schwartz's works restored to readers a sense of friendship, love, hope, and human dignity. His plays mocked a society paralyzed by fear, yet they did so with deep compassion, mourning the moral compromises that authoritarianism imposed on ordinary people.
Drawing on years of archival research, literary historian Natalya Gromova explores the life and work of one of the twentieth century's most distinctive Russian playwrights. She asks who Schwartz really was: a satirist, a wise man disguised as a jester, or an artist who, by overturning familiar meanings, saw reality more clearly than his contemporaries. Gromova argues that Schwartz belongs among the rare writers who preserved an inner light through one of history's darkest periods and whose works continue to offer readers hope, resilience, and moral clarity.

Natalya Gromova. Yevgeny Schwartz: The Fate of a Storyteller in the Age of the Dragon. — Leipzig: ISIA Media Verlag; St. Petersburg: Ivan Limbakh Publishing House, 2026.
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