1894–1958
○ Heart failure
The satirist who dissected post-revolutionary Soviet life
'I will accept any other fate than the one I have' — at the 1954 Writers' Union meeting, after being persecuted anew despite rehabilitation.
Mikhail Zoshchenko was the Soviet Union's most popular satirist, whose deadpan skaz stories, narrated in the fractured, semi-literate voice of the post-revolutionary everyman, captured the absurdities of communal apartments, bureaucracy, and the chasm between revolutionary ideals and everyday reality. A core member of the Serapion Brothers, his books sold an estimated 100 million copies in the 1920s–1930s. In 1946, denounced by Andrei Zhdanov alongside Anna Akhmatova, he was expelled from the Writers' Union and reduced to poverty, the symbolic face of the postwar Stalinist cultural crackdown, and though readmitted after Stalin's death, he refused to recant and died in obscurity in 1958.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1915–1917WWI officer, awarded five military orders including St. Stanislav and St. Anne
- 1919Served in the Red Army, discharged for health reasons
- 1921Joined the Serapion Brothers literary group
- 1922–1930sRose to fame as the USSR's most popular satirist; ~100 million copies sold
- 1939Awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor
- 1943Began serializing Before Sunrise in Oktyabr; publication halted by authorities
- 1946Denounced by Zhdanov, expelled from the Writers' Union, banned from publication
- 1953Readmitted to the Writers' Union after Stalin's death
Related historical events
Before Sunrise and wartime writing
During the Second World War, Zoshchenko wrote antifascist material and completed one of his major works, the autobiographical and psychological inquiry Before Sunrise. In 1941 he contributed to Leningrad newspapers, radio, and the journal Krokodil; in October that year he was evacuated to Alma-Ata, where until spring 1943 he worked at Mosfilm, the film studio evacuated from Moscow. He wrote the screenplay A Soldier’s Luck, which received official approval and went into production in 1943. Returning to Moscow in March 1943, he joined the editorial board of Krokodil. That autumn, the journal October began serializing Before Sunrise. After its appearance provoked sharp criticism, publication was stopped after the first half; the remaining part was not published until 1972, after Zoshchenko’s death. His wartime work thus included both antifascist material and an inward-looking autobiographical project.