Vsevolod Vyacheslavovich Ivanov (, ; – 15 August 1963) was a Soviet and Russian writer, dramatist, journalist and war correspondent. Biography Ivanov was born in what is now Northern Kazakhstan to a teacher's family. When he was a child, Vsevolod ran away to become a clown in a traveling circus. His first story, published in 1915, caught the attention of Maxim Gorky, who advised Vsevolod throughout his career. Ivanov joined the Red Army during the Civil War and fought in Siberia. This inspired his short stories, Partisans (1921) and Armoured Train (1922). Partisans was published in the first edition of the journal Krasnaya Nov, whose editor, Aleksandr Voronsky, saw Ivanov as the most important writer to emerge since the revolution because of his 'joyfulness' and his evocation of a world "where everything is suffused with powerful, primitive vitality ... people, like the nature surrounding them, are pristinely whole and healthy." In 1922 Ivanov joined the literary group Serapion Brothers. Other members included Nikolai Tikhonov, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Viktor Shklovsky, Veniamin Kaverin and Konstantin Fedin. His first novels, Colored Winds (1922) and Azure Sands (1923), were set in Asiatic part of Russia and gave rise to the genre of ostern in Soviet literature. In the early 1920s, he was one of the most popular writers in the Soviet Union. Thirteen of his short stories and three longer works were published in Krasnaya Nov during Voronsky's editorship - more than any other writer's. His novella Baby was acclaimed by Edmund Wilson as the finest Soviet short story ever. In 1927 Ivanov rewrote his short story, the Armoured Train 14-69 into a play. Produced by the Moscow Art Theatre, it was that theatre's 'first production of a strictly Soviet topic', in which the Bolsheviks' enemies were portrayed as whining caricatures, prompting speculation that the head of the MAT, Konstantin Stanislavski had put it on to please the regime and make amends for having produced The Days of the Turbins by Mikhail Bulgakov, with its vivid and sympathetic portrayal of White Russian army officers. The play was acclaimed by communist critics, and singled out for praise by Joseph Stalin, who told a writers' meeting in February 1929: "He's not a communist, Vsevolod Ivanov ... but that hasn't kept him from writing a good piece that has great revolutionary significance. Its educational significance is indisputable." But from the late 1920s, Ivanov began to drink heavily and