‏Valentin Kataev‏

Russian novelist and playwright Valentin Katayev was born in 1897 in the Ukraine, to a middle-class background: his father was a schoolteacher and his grandfather was a general in the Czarist army. He joined the army in 1917 during World War I, was assigned to an artillery unit, and was wounded twice. After the Russian Revolution of 1917 he joined the Bolshevik side, and fought with their forces in the Ukraine against the White Russian army. His innate stubborn streak resulted in several clashes with his superiors about his not being Communist "enough", and at one point he was arrested by the Cheka--the Communist secret police--and spent almost a year in one of their prisons.

In 1922 he moved to Moscow to work, and met a woman whom he married the next year. He worked as a journalist, screenwriter and librettist for several comic operas. At one time he wrote nursery rhymes for children's' books to earn a living. His first novel, "The Embezzlers", was published in 1929, and he wrote several more hit plays, including "Squaring the Circle", a farce that has been performed more than 6,000 times in Europe and the US, and over 1000 times in Russia alone.

He died in Moscow, Russia, on April 12, 1986.