Mikhail Slonimski

Mikhail Slonimski was born in Russia in 1897. He began writing short stories in the early 1920s and show the strong influence of Yevgeni Zamyatin.

In 1922 helped form the literary group, the Serapion Brothers. Inspired by the work of Yevgeni Zamyatin, the group took their name from the story by Ernst T. Hoffmann, the Serapion Brothers, about an individualist who vows to devote himself to a free, imaginative and non-conformist art. Other members included Nickolai Tikhonov, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Victor Shklovsky, Vsevolod Ivanov and Konstantin Fedin. Russia's most important writer of the period, Maxim Gorky, also sympathized with the group's views.

Slonimski's story, Emery's Machine, about the future of Communism, was published in 1923. This was followed by the novel, The Lavrovs (1926), about the problems that intellectuals were having in finding a place in Soviet society.

Other novels by Slonimski include Sredni Prospect (1928), about the New Economic Policy and Foma Kleshnyov (1931).

After the Second World War Slonimski wrote First Years (1949), a revision of The Lavrovs. He attempted to correct the ideological errors of the work by placing the emphasis on the February Revolution to the October Revolution.

Mikhail Slonimski died on 8th October, 1972.