n 1936, Tvardovsky again moves to Moscow--this time as a recognized poet--and enrolls in the Moscow Institute of History, Philosophy, and Literature. In 1939, he graduates and publishes a collection of lyric poems, Selskaya Khonika ("Village Chronicle"). He is also called up into the army. He participates in the Red Army advance into western Belorussia, in the Finnish War, and, of course, the Great Patriotic War. It was during the Finnish War that Tvardovsky, writing for the paper Na Strazhe Rodiny, created the character of Vasya Tyorkin for a humor column. The peasant-soldier was very popular with the real soldiers reading the paper, and he eventually was reworked into the hero of Vasili Tyorkin. Of the poem, Tvardovsky said:

It was my lyric, my social commentary, song and sermon, anecdote and embellishment, heartfelt conversation, and reaction to events.

"Vasili Tyorkin" was perhaps the most popular work of literature among Soviet soldiers during the Great Patriotic War. Appearing in installments between 1942 and 1945, it presented a new folk hero who was everything a Soviet soldier could ever hope to be--clever, witty, inventive, thoughtful, resourceful, dependable, courageous, loveable, fun-loving, and calm under fire. Vasili Tryokin fought Nazis hand-to-hand, was wounded several times, slogged through marshes, swam a freezing river to rescue his comrades, shot down a plane with his rifle, settled arguments, made with the wisecracks and could play a mean accordion. So true and human was Tvardovsky's creation that most Soviet soldiers came to believe that Tyorkin was a real person; many even (mistakenly) remembered seeing him in their units. This work won Tvardovsky his second Stalin Prize in 1946. Surprisingly, praise for this work also came from the staunch anti-Communist Ivan Bunin, who said:

This book is truly unique. What freedom of expression, what accuracy and precision in every detail, what a wonderful soldiers' language--not a hitch, not a single false or vulgar word.

And renegade A. Solzhenitsyn noted:

...soldiers at the front knew to a man the difference between Tyorkin, which rang so miraculously true, and all other wartime books.

The sadness and sorrow of war is expressed in Tvardovsky's 1946 poem Dom u Dorogi ("House by the Road"), which describes life in Russia under Nazi occupation. For this, Tvardovsky won yet another Stalin Prize in 1947. In 1946 he also composed a requiem for the fallen heros, Ya Ubit Podo Rzhevom.

In 1961 he won a Lenin Prize for Za Daliu--Dal' ("Distance Beyond Distance"), a contemplative work presented as a journey across Siberia. In it, the narrator meets a friend returning from a labor camp. Stalinism is condemned as a deviation from Leninism.

In 1954 Tvardovsky began work on Tyorkin Na Tom Svete ("Tyorkin in the Other World"), a type of parody-continuation of the original Tyorkin tale, in which the hero visits hell and finds there a distorted view of Soviet life. The work was not completed until 1963. It was published, but not viewed favorably by government and Party officials.

In 1968 he finished Po Pravu Pamyati ("By Right of Memory"), in part a confession of his own mistakes, and in part a warning to future generations. It was not published until 1987. In the later years of his life, Tvardovsky focused mainly on lyric poetry.