At this time he came to know the Chukovskys; later he became acquainted with a wide circle of authors, including Mikhail Slonimsky, Veniamin Kaverin, Yury Tynyanov, Evgeny Shvarts, Gennady Gor, and Leonid Rakhmanov.

[2] His story collections Vstrechi s Liz (Encounters with Lise, 1927) and Portret (The Portrait, 1931) portray the clash of the former Russian world with the new Soviet reality; they exemplify a lyrical "antipsychologism."

After the stormy meeting of the Leningrad Writers' Union on March 25, 1936, Dobychin disappeared; he is presumed to have committed suicide, and his body was fished out of the Neva River months later.

A critic reviewing Dobychin's book fumed, "The streets of Leningrad are filled with various people, most of whom are healthy, life-loving and energetic builders of socialism, but the author writes: 'Gnats bustled.'"

"[6] And, according to Boris Lanin, "Dobychin's experimentalism was not understood by his contemporaries, as it adhered neither to the dictates of socialist realism nor imitated the ornamental prose of Pil'niak and Zamiatin, and he remained on the periphery of Russian literary life.