The story “Military Secret” was conceived by the writer Arkady Petrovich Gaidar in the summer of 1932 in Khabarovsk, where he worked as a correspondent for the Pacific Star newspaper.

Arkady Petrovich completed the story by the autumn of 1934, while the tale of the Kibalchish Boy, which became part of the “Military Secret, ” was published a year earlier. The publishing house “Molodaya Gvardiya” released the tale as a separate edition with drawings by the artist and graphic designer Vladimir Mikhailovich Konashevich.

The story aroused great interest among readers. Newspapers published numerous reviews from children. The literary and educational communities also responded. The book depicted the early 1930s: a pioneer camp on the Black Sea, the lives of pioneers, construction in the mountains, and relationships between adults. Especially notable were the responses to the tale about Kibalchish Boy. Some said that Arkady Gaidar wrote the first Soviet fairy tale.

An entry from Arkady Petrovich’s diary dated August 21, 1934, reads,

On one occasion, Gaidar was in Rostov-on-Don, where he read excerpts from the new story to a group of pioneers. Upon arrival in Moscow, he received a letter from the Rostov pioneers, asking him to change the ending of the story and let the young character Alka survive. Gaidar answered the children,

At that time, happy endings in literary works, including the work of Arkady Gaidar, were rarely considered.