Ilya Ilf(1897-1937)

Ilya Ilf was born Ilya Arnoldovich Fayzilberg on October 15, 1897, in Odessa, Russian Empire (now Odesa, Ukraine). His father, named Arnold Fayzilberg, was a clerk at a bank. In 1913, he graduated from a Technical School. He worked as a clerk, a telephone technician, and had various industrial jobs in Odessa. After the Russian Revolution, he became an accountant and statistician, then joined a satirical magazine 'Sindetikon' and became a journalist. He published his first poems under a female pseudonym.

In 1923, Ilf moved to Moscow and became staff journalist for the 'Gudok'newspaper. There he met such writers, as Mikhail A. Bulgakov and Yuriy Olesha among others. In 1925, he met Yevgeni Petrov, and a year later, they started writing together. Their first novel titled 'Dvenadtsat Stulev' (Twelve Chairs) was published in 1928. Its main character, named Ostap Bender, became a popular synonym for a charming and smooth criminal. The book had instant success with the general public but was bashed by the Soviet critics because it satirized the loss of civility and described degradation of cultural values in the Soviet Union. The book was praised by such writers as Vladimir Mayakovsky and later by Vladimir Nabokov. Their second novel by Ilf and Petrov was 'Zolotoi Telenok' (Golden Calf), published in 1931, in a magazine, then in 1933, as a book. Both novels became best sellers in the Soviet Union. Several film and TV adaptations were made in the Soviet Union by such directors as Leonid Gaidai and Mark Zakharov, among others. In 1970, an American adaptation was made by director Mel Brooks starring Frank Langella as Ostap Bender. The character Ostap Bender was portrayed by such renown Russian actors as Sergey Yurskiy, Archil Gomiashvili, Andrey Mironov, and Oleg Menshikov.

During 1933-1934, Ilf and Petrov traveled across Europe. In 1935, they made a journey by car about the United States, which gave them material for a popular book 'Odnoetazhnaya Amerika' (The One-Story America 1937). Ilya Ilf died of tuberculosis on April 13, 1937. His partner, Yevgeni Petrov, died in a plane crash on July 2, 1942, on a flight from Sevastopol to Moscow.

In 1948, Andrei Zhdanov attacked many Soviet intellectuals and banned the books of Ilf and Petrov among others. The Communist Party ordered their books banned and removed from all public libraries across the Soviet Union. Eight years later, the ban was lifted during the political "Thaw" initiated by Nikita Khrushchev in 1956.