Ilf and petrov about the Soviet era. Miracles, or the usual word "we" Ilf and Petrov lived in the city

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ILF AND PETROV, Russian satirical writers.

Ilf Ilya (pseudonym; real name and surname Ilya Arnoldovich Fainzilberg), was born in the family of a bank employee. He graduated from the Odessa Technical School (1913). He was a member of the literary circle "Collective of Poets" (among its members - E. G. Bagritsky, Yu. K. Olesha). In 1923 he moved to Moscow. He worked in the newspaper "Gudok", where M. A. Bulgakov, V. P. Kataev, L. I. Slavin, Yu. K. Olesha and others collaborated; wrote mainly stories and essays, which reflected the experience of the revolution and the Civil War of 1917-22. He first signed with the pseudonym Ilf in 1923.

Petrov Evgeny (pseudonym; real name and surname Evgeny Petrovich Kataev), was born in the family of a history teacher. Brother of V.P. Kataev. He changed several professions: he worked as a correspondent, was an agent of the criminal investigation department, etc. He moved to Moscow in 1923. He made his debut with the story “The Goose and the Stolen Boards” (1924); published feuilletons (under the pseudonyms Shilo in the bag, E. Petrov, etc.) in the humorous magazines "Red Pepper" and "Red Wasp". Not later than 1925 he met Ilf; in 1926 he went to work at Gudok. He published collections of short stories The Joys of Megas (1926), Without a Report (1927), Comprehensive Bunny (1928) and others.

Since 1926, the joint work of Ilf and Petrov began; were published under the pseudonyms F. Tolstoevsky, the Cold Philosopher, Vitaly Pseldonimov, Copernicus, A. Not unimportant, Sobakevich, and others in satirical magazines (The Comedian, Ogonyok, Eccentric, and others). Ilf and Petrov became widely known for the satirical novel The Twelve Chairs (1928), in the center of which is the witty adventurer Ostap Bender, acting against the backdrop of a wide panorama of Soviet life in the 1920s. The style of classical Russian prose coexists in the novel with newspaper stamps, slogans, ideological clichés, which are subjected to ironic rethinking and ridicule. Criticism accused the authors of "gnawing", in the absence of real satire; only a year after publication appeared condescending reviews. Among other works of this period are numerous feuilletons, the satirical story "Bright Personality" (1928), a cycle of satirical short stories "1001 days, or the New Scheherazade" (1929). In the stories of this time, Ilf and Petrov turned to topical issues: political purge ("Amateur Ghost", 1929), bureaucracy ("On the verge of death", 1930), opportunism in literature ("Pale child of the century", 1929), etc. The story of Bender was continued in the novel The Golden Calf (1931), where the image of the hero became more complex: he ironically observes the life of Soviet citizens, notes the deformities of modern life (mismanagement, ideologization of culture, etc.). The satirical plan is balanced by an idealized image of the socialist world, which gives the novel an optimistic pathos (episodes of the construction of Turksib, a motor rally, etc.). The novel was highly appreciated by A. V. Lunacharsky and favorably received by critics (V. B. Shklovsky, G. N. Moonblit and others).

In the 1930s, when it became more and more difficult to print satirical stories, Ilf and Petrov tried to write feuilletons in the genre of "positive satire", with optimistic endings ("Literary Tram", 1932, "Dog's Cold", 1935, etc.). The main theme of the feuilletons of the first half of the 1930s was the fight against bureaucracy (“Bone Leg”, 1934), indifference (“Serene Cabinet”, 1934), and lawlessness (“The Case of the Student Sveranovsky”, 1935). In 1935-36, Ilf and Petrov made a car trip around the United States, which resulted in a cycle of travel essays (on which the authors worked separately) One-Story America (1936) - an attempt to objectively comprehend the life of Americans, their achievements and shortcomings.

After Ilf's death from tuberculosis, Petrov prepared and published his notebooks (1939). In the late 1930s, Petrov wrote mainly essays, as well as film scripts in collaboration with G. N. Moonblit (“Musical History”, “Anton Ivanovich Gets Angry”, etc.). During the Great Patriotic War, he worked as a front-line correspondent for the newspapers Pravda and Izvestia. He died in a plane crash while flying from Sevastopol to Moscow. Awarded the Order of Lenin.

The works of Ilf and Petrov were repeatedly staged and filmed (directed by L. I. Gaidai, M. A. Schweitzer, M. A. Zakharov), translated into many languages of the world.

Op.: Sobr. cit.: In 5 vols. M., 1994-1996; The Twelve Chairs: The First Complete Version of the Novel / Comment. M. Odessa, D. Feldman. M., 1997; Ilf I. Notebooks. 1925-1937. M., 2000 [first complete ed.]; Petrov E. My friend Ilf. M., 2001; Ilf I. One-story America: [Author's edition]. M., 2003.

Lit .: Galanov B. E. I. Ilf and E. Petrov. Life. Creation. M., 1961; Memories of I. Ilf and E. Petrov. M., 1963; Préchac A. Il'f et Petrov, témoins de leur temps. R., 2000. Vol. 1-3; Milne L. Zoshchenko and the Ilf-Petrov partnership: how they laughed. Birmingham, 2003; Lurie Ya. S. In the land of the fearless idiots: a book about Ilf and Petrov. 3rd ed. SPb., 2005.

The novel by Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov "The Twelve Chairs", which met with the reader in the first half of 1928, was not reviewed at all within a year after publication. One of the first articles about this work appeared only on June 17, 1929.
Anatoly Tarasenkov's review was called: "A book that is not written about."
The legacy of Ilf and Petrov is not only works of art, but also journalistic essays, notes and notebooks, thanks to which you can learn a lot about the writers' contemporaries and the era in which they happened to live. “When I looked at this list, I immediately saw that nothing would come of it. It was a list for the distribution of apartments, but what was needed was a list of people who could work. These two lists of writers never match. There was no such case."
“At 10.20 I left Moscow for Nizhny. Fiery Kursk railway station. Roaring summer residents board the last train. They are running from the Martians. The train passes the log Rogozhsky district and plunges into the night. Warm and dark, like between the palms.

Ilya Ilf
"Mineral water. We barely ate lamb. We arrived in Pyatigorsk, talking with the man of the law on the cholera riots of 1892 in Rostov. He justifies the punishment.
In Pyatigorsk, we are clearly deceived and hidden somewhere by local beauties. Perhaps Lermontov's grave will be taken out. We traveled by tram, which Igor played at one time. We arrived at the flower garden, but it was gone. Drivers in red sashes. Robbers. Where are the waters, where are the springs? The Bristol Hotel has been repainted with the money of gullible tourists. The weather is wonderful. Mentally together. The air is clean, as Lermontov wrote ... "
Ilya Ilf "Notebooks"
“Installment is the basis of American trade. All items in the American's house are bought on installments: the stove on which he cooks, the furniture on which he sits, the vacuum cleaner with which he cleans the rooms, even the very house in which he lives - everything is purchased on installments. For all this, you have to pay money for decades.
In essence, neither the house, nor the furniture, nor the wonderful little things of mechanized life belong to him. The law is very strict. Out of a hundred contributions, ninety-nine can be made, and if there is not enough money for the hundredth, then the thing will be taken away. The property of even the vast majority is a fiction. Everything, even the bed on which the desperate optimist and ardent advocate of property sleeps, does not belong to him, but to an industrial company or a bank. It is enough for a man to lose his job, and the next day he begins to clearly understand that he is not an owner at all, but the most ordinary slave like a Negro, only white in color.

State of Arizona, photograph by Ilya Ilf “Americans drive fast. Every year they drive faster - the roads are getting better every year, and car engines are getting stronger. They drive fast, boldly and, in general, carelessly. In any case, dogs in America understand more what a highway is than motorists themselves. Clever American dogs never run out onto the highway, barking optimistically behind cars. They know how it ends. They crush - and that's it. People in this regard are somehow carefree.
Ilya Ilf, Evgeny Petrov "One-story America"
“In 1923 Moscow was a dirty, neglected and disorderly city. At the end of September, the first autumn rain fell, and on the cobblestone pavements the dirt kept until frost. Private traders traded in Okhotny Ryad and Obzhorny Ryad. Trucks rumbled by. There was hay. Sometimes a police whistle blew, and patentless traders, pushing pedestrians with baskets and trays, slowly and impudently ran up the lanes. Muscovites looked at them with disgust. It is disgusting when an adult bearded man with a red face and bulging eyes runs down the street. Homeless children were sitting near the asphalt boilers. Cab drivers stood at the roadside - strange carriages with very high wheels and a narrow seat, on which two people could hardly fit. The Moscow cabbies looked like pterodactyls with cracked leather wings - antediluvian creatures and drunken besides. In that year, the policemen were given a new uniform - black overcoats and hats with a gray artificial lamb patty with a red cloth top. The policemen were very proud of the new uniform. But they were even more proud of the red sticks that were given to them in order to conduct the far from busy street traffic.
Moscow was eating off after years of hunger. Instead of the old, destroyed life, a new one was created. Many provincial young people came to Moscow in order to conquer the great city. During the day they crowded near the labor exchange. They spent the night at railway stations and boulevards. And the happiest of the conquerors settled with relatives and friends. The gloomy corridors of large Moscow apartments were crowded with provincial relatives sleeping on chests.
Evgeny Petrov "From the memories of Ilf"

Evgeny Petrov
“Shortly before the perfidious attack of the Nazis on the Soviet Union, I happened to visit Germany.
Already in the carriage of the German train, it became clear that Germany was not at all like the one that I saw and knew before the Nazis came to power. From the sleeping car "Mitrop" (once they were a model of cleanliness and comfort), there was only one luxurious name. The ceilings of the compartment and corridor turned from white into some kind of brown, shabby. The polished wood of the furniture was scratched, the floor dirty. A long metal strip lagged behind the door of the compartment and painfully scratched those who had the imprudence to approach it. The guide shook his head, touched the strip with his finger, made an unsuccessful attempt to deal with it with a penknife, then waved his hand. Doesn't matter! In conclusion, the conductor cheated us by several marks - an incident that could hardly have happened in pre-Hitler Germany.
And by no means could it happen in old Germany what happened to me in a decent Berlin hotel on Friedrichstrasse. If this had happened to anyone else, I would never have believed it! In my hotel room they simply stole a sausage, a pound and a half of Moscow sausage, and a roll wrapped in paper.
Evgeny Petrov "In Nazi Germany"
Sources:
Ilf I. Petrov E. "One-story America"
Ilf I. "Notebooks"
Petrov E. "From the memories of Ilf"
Petrov E. "In Nazi Germany"

ILF AND PETROV- Ilf, Ilya Arnoldovich (1897–1937) (real name Fainzilberg), Petrov Evgeny Petrovia (1903–1942) (real name Kataev), Russian prose writers.

Ilf was born on October 4 (16), 1897 in Odessa in the family of a bank employee. In 1913 he graduated from a technical school, after which he worked in a drawing office, at a telephone exchange, at an aircraft factory, and at a hand grenade factory. After the revolution, he was an accountant, a journalist in YugROSTA, an editor in humorous and other magazines, a member of the Odessa Union of Poets. In 1923 he came to Moscow, became an employee of the Gudok newspaper, with which M. Bulgakov, Yu. Olesha and other later famous writers collaborated in the 1920s. Ilf wrote materials of a humorous and satirical nature - mostly feuilletons. Petrov was born on November 30, 1903 in Odessa in the family of a teacher. He became the prototype of Pavlik Bachey in the trilogy of his older brother Valentin Kataev Waves of the Black Sea. In 1920 he graduated from a classical gymnasium and became a correspondent for the Ukrainian Telegraph Agency. In the autobiography of Ilf and Petrov (1929), it is said about Petrov: “After that, he served as an inspector of the criminal investigation department for three years. His first literary work was the report of the examination of the corpse of an unknown man. In 1923 Petrov came to Moscow. V. Kataev introduced him to the environment of journalists and writers. Petrov became an employee of the Red Pepper magazine, and in 1926 he came to work for the Gudok magazine. Like Ilf, he wrote mainly humorous and satirical materials.

In 1927, with a joint work on the novel The twelve Chairs the creative community of Ilf and Petrov began. The plot basis of the novel was suggested by Kataev, to whom the authors dedicated this work. In his memoirs about Ilf, Petrov later wrote: “We quickly agreed that the plot with chairs should not be the basis of the novel, but only the reason, the reason for showing life.” The co-authors succeeded in this to the full extent: their works became the brightest “encyclopedia of Soviet life” of the late 1920s and early 1930s.

The novel was written in less than half a year; in 1928 it was published in the magazine "30 days" and in the publishing house "Earth and Factory". In the book edition, the co-authors restored the bills, which they had to make at the request of the editor of the magazine.

Ostap Bender was originally conceived as a minor character. For him, Ilf and Petrov had prepared only the phrase: "The key to the apartment where the money is." Subsequently, like many other phrases from the novels about Ostap Bender (“The ice has broken, gentlemen of the jury!”; “A sultry woman is a poet’s dream”; “Money in the morning - chairs in the evening”; “Don’t wake the beast in me”, etc.) , she became winged. According to Petrov’s memoirs, “Bender gradually began to bulge out of the framework prepared for him, soon we could no longer cope with him. By the end of the novel, we treated him like a living person, and often got angry with him for the impudence with which he crawled into each chapter.

Some images of the novel were outlined in Ilf's notebooks and in Petrov's humorous stories. So, Ilf has a record: “Two young people. All life phenomena are answered only with exclamations. The first says - "horror", the second - "beauty". In Petrov's humoresque gifted girl(1927) a girl "with an unpromising forehead" speaks the language of the heroine twelve chairs Ellochka cannibals.

Novel The twelve Chairs attracted the attention of readers, but critics did not notice him. O. Mandelstam wrote indignantly in 1929 that this "pamphlet splashing with joy" was not needed by the reviewers. A. Tarasenkov's review in Literaturnaya Gazeta was entitled The book that is not written about. Rapp's critics called the novel "gray mediocrity" and noted that it did not "charge deep hatred for the class enemy."

Ilf and Petrov began to work on a continuation of the novel. To do this, they had to "resurrect" Ostap Bender, who was stabbed to death in the final twelve chairs Kisoy Vorobyaninov. New romance Golden calf was published in 1931 in the journal 30 Days, in 1933 it was published as a separate book by the Federation publishing house. After leaving golden calf The dilogy became unusually popular not only in the USSR, but also abroad. Western critics compared it to The adventures of the good soldier Schweik Ya. Hasek. L. Feuchtwanger wrote that he had never seen "the commonwealth grow into such a creative unity." Even V.V. Nabokov, who spoke contemptuously about Soviet literature, noted in 1967 the amazing talent of Ilf and Petrov and called their works "absolutely first-class."

In both novels, Ilf and Petrov parodied Soviet reality - for example, its ideological clichés ("Beer is sold only to members of the trade union," etc.). The performances of Meyerhold ( Marriage at the Columbus Theatre), and the correspondence between F.M. Dostoevsky and his wife published in the 1920s (letters from Father Fyodor), and the searches of the post-revolutionary intelligentsia (“homemade truth” by Vasisualy Lokhankin). This gave reason to some representatives of the first Russian emigration to call the novels of Ilf and Petrov a libel on the Russian intelligentsia.

In 1948, the secretariat of the Writers' Union decided to consider The twelve Chairs And Golden calf libelous and slanderous books, the reprinting of which "can only arouse indignation on the part of Soviet readers." The ban on reprinting was also enshrined in a special resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, which was in force until 1956.

Between two novels about Bender, Ilf and Petrov wrote a satirical novel bright personality(1928), two series of grotesque novellas Unusual stories from the life of the city of Kolokolamsk And 1001 days, or New Scheherazade(1929) and other works.

Since 1932, Ilf and Petrov began to write feuilletons for the Pravda newspaper. In 1933-1934 they visited Western Europe, in 1935 - in the USA. US travel essays compiled a book One Story America(1937). It was a work about small provincial towns and farms, and ultimately about the "average American."

The creative cooperation of writers was interrupted by the death of Ilf in Moscow on April 13, 1937. Petrov made a lot of efforts to publish Ilf's notebooks, conceived a great work My friend Ilf. In 1939-1942 Petrov worked on the novel Journey to the Land of Communism, in which he described the USSR in 1963.

During the Great Patriotic War, Petrov became a front-line correspondent. He died on July 2, 1942 in a plane crash, returning to Moscow from Sevastopol.

Compositions

the novel The Twelve Chairs (1928);
the novel The Golden Calf (1931);
short stories "Unusual stories from the life of the city of Kolokolamsk" (1928);
fantastic story "Bright Personality";
short stories "A Thousand and One Days, or New Scheherazade" (1929);
screenplay for Once Upon a Summer (1936);
story "One-story America" (1937).

The collected works of Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov in five volumes were re-published (after 1939) in 1961 by the State Publishing House of Fiction. In the introductory article to this collected works, D. I. Zaslavsky wrote:

The fate of the literary community of Ilf and Petrov is unusual. She touches and excites. They did not work together for long, only ten years, but they left a deep, indelible mark on the history of Soviet literature. The memory of them does not fade, and the love of readers for their books does not weaken. The novels "The Twelve Chairs" and "The Golden Calf" are widely known.

Screen versions of works

- One summer
- Quite seriously (essay How Robinson was created)
- Ilf and Petrov rode in the tram (based on stories and feuilletons)

Interesting facts from the biography of writers

A few years after the start of their joint creative activity, Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov wrote (in 1929) a kind of “double autobiography” (the text can be read: Ilf I., Petrov E., Collected Works in 6 volumes. V.1, Moscow , 1961, p. 236), in which, with their inherent wonderful humor, they told about how the two “halves” of the author of “The Twelve Chairs”, the satirical story “Bright Personality”, were born, grew up, matured and finally united (in 1925) grotesque short stories "Unusual stories from the life of the city of Kolokolamsk" and so on.

Ilya Ilf was born in the family of a bank employee and in 1913. graduated from technical school. He worked in a drawing office, at a telephone exchange, at an aircraft factory and at a hand grenade factory. After that he became a statistician, then - the editor of the comic magazine "Syndeticon", in which he wrote poetry under a female pseudonym, an accountant and a member of the Presidium of the Odessa Union of Poets.

Evgeny Petrov was born in the family of a teacher and in 1920. graduated from a classical gymnasium, after which he became a student of the Ukrainian Telegraph Agency. After, for three years, he served as an inspector of the criminal investigation department. His first literary work was a protocol for examining the corpse of an unknown man. In 1923 Evgeny Petrov moved to Moscow, where he continued his education while working in humorous newspapers and magazines. Wrote several books of humorous stories.

Evgeny Petrov was the younger brother of the famous Soviet writer Valentin Kataev.

Memory

Writers opened monuments in Odessa. The monument shown at the end of The Twelve Chairs (1971) never really existed.
Promotes the works of his "two fathers" Ilf's daughter, Alexandra, works as an editor at a publishing house where she translates texts into English. For example, thanks to her work, the full author's version of the Twelve Chairs was published, uncensored and with a chapter not included in the early texts.

Compositions

Screen versions of works

Interesting facts from the biography of writers

Memory

see also

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