Lelya and Minka

Mikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko was born in 1895. His father was an artist-forward, mother, before marriage, the actress wrote stories. The boy himself in 1907 composed the story "Coats". In 1913, Mikhail entered the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University. But the first world war interrupted to study. In 1915, he volunteered to the front, commanded the battalion, became the St. George Cavalier. But even in these years he did not stop writing comic short stories, satirical works, composed epigrams for fellow soldiers. In 1916, he fell under the gas attack of the Germans and was demobilized in 1917, but then returned again. He was awarded four combat orders.
After the October Revolution, Zoshchenko went over to the side of the Soviet regime. From 1917 to 1919 he changed many professions: he worked as a court secretary, a clerk of the Petrograd military port, even a carpenter and a shoemaker, served in the police. And all these years he continued to engage in literary activities, visited the literary studio at the publishing house "World Literature", led by Korney Chukovsky. In 1921, the first book of Zoshchenko’s stories was published, then the collections "sentimental novels", "Blue Book", "Historical Tales" and others. Many outstanding contemporaries - A. Tolstoy, Yu. Olesha, S. Marshak, Yu. Tynyanov - highly appreciated Zoshchenko"s work. He created a new type of hero for Russian literature - a man who did not receive an education, a layman with a wretched moral and a primitive look at the surrounding, but striving to become a full -fledged participant in life.
At the beginning of the Patriotic War, Zoshchenko was evacuated to Alma-Ata, where he worked in the scenario studio of Mosfilm. In the spring of 1943 he returned to Moscow, was a member of the editorial board of the journal Crocodile.
In August 1946, a resolution of the Central Committee was issued, in which Zoshchenko’s work was sharply criticized. He was expelled from the members of the Union of Writers, and until 1953 he was engaged in mainly translation activities.
In June 1953, Zoshchenko was again admitted to the Writers" Union. In the last years of his life, he worked in the magazines "Crocodile" and "light".
Mikhail Zoshchenko died in 1958 in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg).
For secondary school age