ZOSHCHENKO, MIKHAIL MIKHAYLOVICH

born Aug. 10 [July 29, Old Style], 1895, Poltava, Ukraine, Russian Empire died July 22, 1958, Leningrad [now St. Petersburg] Soviet satirist whose short stories and sketches are among the best comic literature of the Soviet period. Zoshchenko studied law and then in 1915 joined the army. Between 1917 and 1920 he lived in many different cities and worked at a variety of odd jobs and trades. In 1921 in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) he joined the Serapion Brothers literary group. Zoshchenko's tales are primarily satires on contemporary Soviet everyday life. One of his main targets was bureaucratic red tape and corruption, which he attacked with tongue-in-cheek wit, using artificial language and malapropisms that make his works virtually untranslatable. One critic (Gleb Struve) has remarked that it is as difficult to translate Zoshchenko into English or American as it would be to translate Edward Lear or Damon Runyon into Russian. Beginning in the 1930s, Zoshchenko was subjected to increasingly severe criticism from officialdom. He tried to conform to the requirements of Socialist Realismnotably in Istoriya odnoy zhizhni (1935; The Story of One Life), dealing with the construction, by forced labour, of the White SeaBaltic Waterwaybut with little success. In 1943 the magazine Oktyabr began to serialize his psychological-introspective series of episodes, anecdotes, and reminiscences entitled Pered voskhodom solntsa (Before Sunrise) but suspended publication after the second installment. In 1946 Zoshchenko published in the literary magazine Zvezda a short story, Priklyucheniya obezyany (The Adventures of a Monkey), which was condemned by Communist critics as malicious and insulting to the Soviet people. He was expelled (with the poet Anna Akhmatova) from the Union of Soviet Writers, which meant the virtual end of his literary career. After his death, the Soviet press tended to ignore him; but some of his works were reissued, and their prompt sale indicated his continuing popularity.