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).

He develops many social connections there but loses touch with many of his friends after he is presumed dead during work to build an emergency railway line to provide Shepetovka with firewood.

As his health worsens due to his life of hardship and wartime injuries, he spends time in Sanatoria on the Black Sea coast, where he eventually meets and marries the young daughter of a friend of his mother's.

Eventually, having lost his eyesight and almost totally paralyzed, Pavel moves to Moscow to consult medical specialists, but his condition is hopeless and he ends up staying there to write a novel about his cavalry division from the Civil War.

In the serial version Ostrovsky had described the tense atmosphere of Pavel's home, his suffering when he became an invalid, the deterioration of his relationship with his wife, and their separation.

In the Soviet Union, three films were produced based on this novel: In China, the novel was adapted into a television series of the same title in 2000; all the members of the cast were from Ukraine.