Today we will talk about a talented person whose name is not familiar to everyone, but who has made a significant contribution to the development of satirical literature. Victor Ardov is a writer whose work is still being discussed by true connoisseurs of this field.
He was born at the beginning of the century and went a difficult way through various historical events and turning points in history. And all this time he did not stop creating literary masterpieces.
Victor Ardov: family
To begin with, we would like to talk about the most important thing - what are the roots of this talented writer. Ardov Victor Efimovich was born in 1900 in the month of October. There is no exact date of birth, because due to the calendar update, all people born in that period of time have two birthdays. And so it is with Victor - on October 8 or 21.
It happened in Voronezh. Victor's father - Efim Moiseevich Zigberman, a railway engineer, graduated from the then prestigious Institute of Technology in Kharkov. As a Jew, he was a member of the national community in Voronezh. The writer’s grandfather was the owner of a dental clinic in which he himself worked.
As you can understand, Victor grew up in a family with a good income. At the age of eighteen, he became a graduate of the Moscow gymnasium for boys and began working in a cabaret. There he performed the role of entertainer, and also acted as an actor. Seven years later, Ardov already graduated from the Moscow Institute of National Economy, where he studied at the Faculty of Economics.
War and creativity
Victor Ardov, whose biography is brought to your attention, began his career at the age of twenty-one. At first he began to draw caricature sketches and composed text for them. These works were published in such magazines as the famous Crocodile and Red Pepper. Later he began to write satirical stories and made illustrations for them on his own.
Even before the war began, he managed to create many comedies both independently and together with other talented writers:
- “Skloka” (co-author - Nikulin L.V.);
- “Article 114 of the Criminal Code” (co-author - Nikulin L. V.);
- "Tarakanovschina" (co-author - Nikulin);
- “Birthday Girl” (co-author - Mass V.Z.);
- "Small trump card".
His work ("Birthday Girl") was even staged at the Moscow Theater. In addition, the author wrote wonderful humor for such famous artists as Arkady Raikin and Rina Zelenaya.
At the age of twenty-seven, Victor became the head of the literary department of the theater in Leningrad. And when the war began, he did not stand aside. At forty-two, the writer voluntarily went to the front and throughout the war served as a war correspondent with the rank of major. After the war he was awarded and received the Order of the Red Star.
Alias: why "Ardov"
Victor Ardov, whose stories were very popular in that era, was not published under his real name. According to his father, he had the
Jewish surname Zigberman, but as if he had forgotten about it as soon as he began to create.
Many people wonder: why such a pseudonym? There is no exact explanation at the moment, but there is one most likely version. Jews have two sub-ethnic groups that sometimes converge in the same family. That's what happened with Victor. Ashkenazi became his ancestors on the one hand, and Sephardi on the other. The writer initially took the surname of Sephardis, but then the prefix somehow disappeared, and the pseudonym Ardov remained.
Famous friends
Ardov (Zigberman) Victor Efimovich lived at the same time as the great literary figures and communicated with many of them personally. He had very close friendships with some. Having studied many different sources, we can confidently state that among Viktor's friends there were such
famous writers as Mayakovsky V.V., Bulgakov M.A.,
Zoshchenko M.M., Ilf I.A. and Petrov E.P., and also actress Ranevskaya F.G. The writer talks about them in his book of memoirs.
And some names there are mentioned not just as friends or colleagues. We are talking about people who very often lived with him in a Moscow apartment. About Brodsky I.A., Pasternak B.L., Tsvetaeva M.I. and other famous names Ardov more than once spoke of his close friends. Especially closely, he himself and his relatives communicated with Anna Akhmatova. The famous poetess was so close to this family that her monument was erected in the courtyard of their Moscow house.
Personal life
Victor Ardov was married twice. His first wife was
Irina Ivanova, about whom nothing is known except her name. There is no exact data even about exactly when this event happened for the first time. Maybe at that time there was a problem with the documentation, and therefore now there is a lot of confusion with the restoration of lost information.
But it is known for sure that the second time the writer married in 1933. This time, his wife was the actress Olshevskaya Nina. She gave birth to Victor two sons: Misha and Borya. In addition, the writer had a brother Mark, who worked, like their grandfather, in the field of medicine and became a very famous figure in this field. Ardov maintained family relations with his uncle on the maternal side - Vyacheslav Volgin, and with his cousin Jacob. That's basically his whole family.
Writer's works
Victor Ardov, whose books still attract us, became the author of forty collections, which included humorous stories, sketches, essays and feuilleton. He wrote the scripts for the films Bright Way and Happy Flight.
Already after the death of the writer, which overtook him on February 28, 1976, in Moscow, a book was published with his memoirs under the title "Studies". The list of works by Ardov is very large, and almost every one of them was very popular at the time. They came out, starting in 1926 under the following names:
- “Do you like to ride?”
- "Come tomorrow";
- "Kavardak on the air";
- "Cream of society";
- "The insidious lunatic";
- Sugar Medovich;
- "Your friends";
- "Sore spot";
- "A nightmare of regional significance";
- "Samples of eloquence";
- "Actor's work";
- "Grandmothers, grandmothers";
- "Registry Office Errors";
- "Flowers, berries";
- "Two in the hole."
After the death of the writer, several more collections were published:
- In 1980, Humorous Stories was released;
- In 1987 - The Soviet Story;
- In 2005 - “The Great and the Funny”;
- In 2011 - “Intentional children”;
- In 2012 - “Poodle language”.
As we see, over the years the writer's work has not lost relevance. After all, humor has no boundaries or barriers. This is precisely what we can observe in the work of the famous satirist Viktor Zigberman (Ardov).