Works of Soviet Literature summarized for those unable or too lazy to read them in the original. ENCYLOPEDIA OF SOVIET WRITERS Zamyatin, Evgeny Ivanovich . Born on 1 February 1884 in Lebedyan, Tambov guberniya. His father was a priest. His mother was an educated woman who loved literature and played the piano. As a child, he claims that his friends were books. Years later, he wrote: "I still remember how I shivered over Dostoevsky's Netochka Nezvanova and Turgenev's First Love . These were my elders and, perhaps, a bit terrifying. Gogol was a friend." In 1902, he graduated from the Voronezh Gymnasium with a Gold Medal, which he pawned some months later for 25 rubles. He went on to enroll in the Shipbuilding Institute in Petersburg. During summers, he did practical work in factories and ships, including one journey from Odessa to Alexandria, with many stops in between. He was in Odessa during the mutiny on the Potemkin . He joined the Bolsheviks and took part in the revolutionary events of 1905. At one point, his room was a clandestine printing press. For his political activities, in 1905 Zamyatin was arrested, beaten up, locked in solitary for several months, then banished from Petersburg. He managed to return to the capital some time later, however, and illegally graduated from the Shipbuilding Institute in 1908, after which he joined its faculty. | |
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