Mikhail Zoshchenko

(1895 - 1958)

Mikhail Zoshchenko volunteered to fight in World War I and was gassed on the German front, causing him permanent heart and liver damage. He then fought in the Red Army during the Russian Revolution. Zoshchenko published Sentimental Tales in 1929, Youth Restored in 1933, and The Blue Book in 1935. Within months of publishing his story “The Adventures of a Monkey” in 1946, Zoshchenko was denounced by Soviet authorities as the “scum of literature” and, along with poet Anna Akhmatova, was expelled from the Soviet Writers’ Union.