[2] Bondarev took part in World War II as an artillery officer and became a member of the CPSU in 1944.

His novel Silence became a landmark as the first work to depict a citizen who had been wrongly sentenced to the Gulag.

[6] In the novel The Hot Snow (1969) he again used the theme of war, creating an epic canvas dealing with the Battle of Stalingrad from the viewpoint of its many participants including common soldiers and military commanders.

[4] In The Choice (1980) a terminally ill expatriate kills himself on a visit to Moscow so that he can be buried in the city of his youth.

Bondarev was a member of the central committee of the hardline Communist Party of the RSFSR at the end of the Mikhail Gorbachev era; in July 1991 he signed the anti-Perestroika declaration "A Word to the People".