After the Russian Revolution of 1905 his popularity increased, and his 1911 story The Man from the Restaurant [ru] (Человек из ресторана Chelovek iz restorana) had tremendous success, making him one of the best known writers of the day; it "depicts, with moments of Dostoyevskyan power, the decadence of the wealthy, as seen by a simple waiter and pious father to whom son and daughter return after disastrous adventures in the world.

"[3] Shmelev welcomed the February Revolution and the fall of the autocracy; he set off on a series of journeys across Russia to see the effects of the change, and was extremely moved when political exiles returning from Siberia told him how much his writings had meant to them.

as The Sun of the Dead in 1927): "In the mosaic of the impressions of the narrator, an elderly intelligent stuck in the Crimea after the evacuation of Wrangel's troops from the peninsula, there pass the fates of the inhabitants of the Crimea—intelligents, workers, peasants—Tatars and Russians—men and women, all equally clutched in the vice of hunger and fear of the Terror... Everything gradually dies against the background of the loveliness of nature, on the shore of the azure sea, under the rays of a golden sun—the sun of the dead, because it illuminates an earth on which everything has been eaten, drunk, trampled—on which poultry, animals, and men are all dying".

[6] Another important work of his later period is The Year of Grace [Leto Gospodne] (1933–48), an autobiographical novel full of lovingly drawn characters and beautifully observed details in which "his style reaches a high level of lyrical and epic contemplation".

Operation of the third part of the novel should occur in deserts Optinoj where after many shocks and irreplaceable losses its hero finds the sincere world and the higher sense of life begins to see clearly.