Travel Reference
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I
Ilf and Petrov
writers
The most popular satirists of the early Soviet
period, Ilf and Petrov met in Moscow in 1925
and for the next decade collaborated as partners
on humorous sketches and stories. Ilf (1897-
1937) was born Ilya Arnoldovich Faizelberg in
ODESSA
, the son of a bank clerk. After graduation
from the Odessa Technical School, he took a
number of jobs, including telephone operator,
statistician, and accountant, while writing poetry
and editing a humorous magazine. He moved to
Moscow in 1923, where he worked as a reporter
and contributed to several humor magazines.
Petrov (1903-42), born Evgenii Petrovich
Kataev, also hailed from Odessa and was the son
of a schoolmaster. His older brother Valentin
Kataev was the author of the socialist realist clas-
sic
Time Forward!
(1932). Petrov also moved to
Moscow in 1923, where his experience as a
reporter and a police criminal investigator ini-
tially inspired him to write detective stories.
Their two novels about the wheeling and dealing
of successful operators during the NEP years,
published as
Dvenatsat stulev
(
The Twelve Chairs
)
(1927) and
Zolotoi telenok
(
The Golden Calf
) (1931),
became instant classics and have remained so
ever since. A sojourn in the United States in the
1930s as correspondents for the newspaper
Pravda
resulted in the topic
Odnoetazhnaia
Amerika
(
Little Golden America
), a pointed but
humorous description of a country both had
admired. Ilf and Petrov also wrote many humor-
ous gems such as “How Robinson Was Created”
(1932), a spoof on editorial interference and
censorship that still rang true half a century
later. Ilf died in Moscow of tuberculosis. After
Ilf's death, Petrov continued to write for
Pravda
and for humor magazines. During World War II,
he worked as a war correspondent, but he was
killed when the Germans shot down the plane
in which he was flying back to Moscow from
Crimea.
Ilya Muromets
legendary character
A mythical warrior or
BOGATYR
in the traditional
folk epics (
byliny
) composed between the 10th
and 12th centuries, Ilya Muromets, or Ilya of
Murom, was said to be part of the court of
VLADIMIR I
, the ruler who brought Christianity to
KIEVAN RUS
. Unlike most other legendary figures
from Vladimir's entourage, Ilya Muromets was
said to be of peasant origin. He was an invalid for
the first 30 years of his life until a miraculous
cure set him on the path to heroic deeds. Given
a magic horse, Ilya traveled to Vladimir's court,
where he became known for his strength, gen-
erosity, and devotion. Some scholars have noted
that the legend about his long period of immo-
bility links him to the Eastern Christian tradition
of “pillar-like immobility,” while the name Ilya
represents the Slavic form of the name Elijah, the
Old Testament prophet who ascended to heaven
in a chariot of fire. Whereas other
bogatyri
seem
to represent the nobility or clergy of early Kiev,
Ilya is the symbol of the peasant masses, perhaps
the reason for the enduring popularity of his leg-
end. His zeal is tempered by an independent
streak, while his uncommon strength is only
used reluctantly as a last resort.
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