Yury Olesha

In Elizavetgrad, on March 3, 1899, Yuri Olesha was born to Catholic parents of Polish ancestry. Karl Antonovich, Olesha’s father, was a destitute landowner who eventually worked as a government alcohol inspector and had a penchant for drinking and gambling. Olesha and his family moved to Odessa in 1902, and it was there that Yuri finally met many of his fellow authors, including Isaac Babel, Ilya Ilf, and Valentin Kataev, with whom he would go on to have a lifetime association. Yuri was a gifted student who excelled in physics but preferred literature over his other courses. He started writing the year before he received his high school diploma. Olesha enrolled in law school in 1917 but withdrew two years later to join the Red Army during the Civil War. It was around this period that he started creating propaganda for the revolution.