Vsevolod Ivanov: The Life of a Non-Random Writer

Vsevolod Vyacheslavovich Ivanov (1895—1963) — author of «Partisan Stories», «Armored Train 14-69», «Adventures of a Fakir» — announced himself in the early 1920s when, having moved from Siberia to Petrograd, he found himself at the epicenter of the Russian literary process: he became a member of the group «Serebryakov Brothers», befriended Boris Pilnyak, Sergei Yesenin, Viktor Shklovsky, communicated extensively with Gorky, and engaged in polemics with the ideologues of Proletkult. However, his relationship with «official literature» became at least complicated: from «bourgeois» stories that made up the book «The Secret of Secrets», Ivanov moved towards collaboration with the authorities — up to participating in the coverage of the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal and organizing the first congress of Soviet writers. It was not easy to preserve oneself as an individual in the tense atmosphere of the late 1930s. It seems that Ivanov managed to keep in his soul that precious quality that distinguishes his best works, combining realism and «ornamental» imagery, inheriting the poetries of folklore, imagists, and futurists.