Mikhail Zoshchenko

The son of the Peredvizhnik artist and hereditary nobleman Mikhail Ivanovich Zoshchenko (1857–1907) and Elizaveta Iosifovna Zoshchenko, née Surina (1875–1920), who had been an actress before marriage and wrote short stories. Childhood impressions, including those of the difficult relations between his parents, were later reflected both in Zoshchenko’s children’s stories (Galoshi i morozhenoe, Yolka, Babushkin podarok, Ne nado vrat’ and others) and in his novella Before Sunrise (1943). His first literary attempts date from childhood. In one of his notebooks he noted that in 1902–1906 he had already tried writing poetry, and in 1907 he wrote the story The Overcoat. In 1913 Zoshchenko entered the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University. His first surviving stories, Vanity (1914) and The Two-Kopeck Piece (1914), belong to this period. His studies were interrupted by the First World War. In 1915 Zoshchenko volunteered for the front, commanded a battalion, and became a recipient of the Order of St. George. Literary work did not cease in those years either. Zoshchenko tried his hand at short fiction, epistolary writing, and satire (composing letters to imaginary addressees and epigrams on fellow soldiers). In 1917 he was demobilized because of a heart condition that developed after gas poisoning. After returning to Petrograd, he wrote Marusya, Meshchanochka, Neighbor, and other unpublished stories in which the influence of Guy de Maupassant was evident. In 1918, despite his illness, Zoshchenko volunteered for the Red Army and fought on the fronts of the Civil War until 1919. After returning to Petrograd, he earned his living, as before the war, by various professions: shoemaker, joiner, carpenter, actor, instructor in rabbit breeding, policeman, criminal investigator employee, and others. In the humorous Orders for the Railway Militia and Criminal Supervision of Ligovo Station and other unpublished works written at this time, the style of the future satirist is already discernible. In 1919 Zoshchenko studied in the Creative Studio organized at the