Leonid Panteleev

Real name — Aleksey Ivanovich Yeremeyev — a Russian Soviet writer. After the revolution, during the Civil War, he was homeless. In 1921 he entered the Dostoevsky School of Social and Individual Education (ShKiD), founded by V. N. Soroka-Rosinsky, where he met G. Belykh. After leaving school he lived in Leningrad and worked as a journalist.

Alyosha Yeremeyev was born in St. Petersburg, into the family of a Cossack officer, a cornet, Ivan Adrianovich Yeremeyev, a descendant of Old Believers, a hero of the Russo-Japanese War, who later inherited the family business — the timber and firewood trade. Alyosha’s mother, Aleksandra Sergeyevna, also came from a merchant family, but one of a completely different spirit. Family life did not work out from the very beginning. Cheerful, open, naive Shurochka and secretive, gloomy, proud Ivan Adrianovich — these qualities made it difficult for them to understand one another. However, this did not prevent them from having three children — Alyosha, Vasya, and Lyalya.

During the First World War Alyosha’s parents separated; Ivan Adrianovich left for logging operations in Vladimir and died there in 1916. Aleksandra Sergeyevna was left alone with three children, earning a living by giving music lessons.

In that same year, 1916, Aleksey entered the Second Petrograd Real School, but the unfolding revolutionary events in 1917 prevented him from studying normally, drawing most of the children into discussions of politics and the country’s future development. In October 1917 Alyosha fell seriously ill and lay delirious throughout the October Revolution.

In 1918 the entire family decided to leave for Chyeltzovo village in Yaroslavl Province, fleeing famine in Petrograd. There, against the backdrop of the unfolding Civil War, Lyosha fell ill with diphtheria, and he and his mother went to Yaroslavl to see a doctor. At that very time the Yaroslavl uprising began. The Europa Hotel, where they were staying, was continuously shelled; several times Alyosha encountered White Guard soldiers