Yevgeny Petrov
Probably there are no people among the citizens of the former Soviet Union who have not heard about the novels of Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov "The Twelve Chairs" and "The Golden Calf". The works of these authors have been translated into dozens of languages, survived a large number of reprints and have been repeatedly filmed. The authors are often perceived only in tandem, but we will try to "separate" them and stop at Eugene Petrov and his awards.
Yevgeny Petrovich Kataev was born on 30 November 1902 in the city of Odessa. In 1923 he came to Moscow, to his elder brother Valentin Kataev. He worked in the magazines "Red Pepper" and "Crocodile". In 1924, he got a pseudonym - Evgeny Petrov. In the summer of 1927, the creative tandem of Ilf and Petrov was created.
They wrote the novels "The Twelve Chairs" and "The Golden Calf". The book of travel essays "One-story America". Ilya Ilf died on 13 April 1937. In 1938, Petrov headed the weekly magazine "Ogoniok". In 1939, Yevgeny Petrov, among 21 writers who received awards of the country "for outstanding achievements in the development of Soviet fiction", was awarded with the Order of Lenin (number of the order 3912).
During the Great Patriotic War, Petrov took a job as a correspondent in the Sovinformburo. He published front-line reports in "Pravda", "Red Star", "Ogoniok", and he also sent materials to the American newspaper agency NANA (North American Newspaper Alliance). Constantly flying to the front, he received a contusion at Maloyaroslavets.
In the summer of 1942 he urged Admiral Ivan Isakov to help him with a trip to besieged Sevastopol. Isakov refused, considering the trip extremely risky. Nevertheless, permission was received and Petrov flew to Krasnodar, from there he reached Sevastopol. He returned from Sevastopol on the battleship "Tashkent" which was subjected to continuous attack by enemy aircraft (more than 300 bombs were dropped on it), but was able to get to Novorossiysk.
Yevgeny Petrov flew from Krasnodar to Moscow on 2 July 1942 on a passenger plane "Douglas", which crashed into a mound near the farm Gusev, Chertkovsky district. From his injuries Evgeny Petrov died and was buried in the village of Mankovo - Kalitvenskoye, Rostov region.
From an obituary, written by Ilya Ehrenburg:
"Throughout the entire year of the war, Yevgeny Petrov sent his essays to America, they were published in hundreds of major newspapers. He told Americans about the valor of the Red Army. Petrov knew America and found words that reached of his transatlantic readers. Petrov did a lot to tell America the truth of our war."
In 1943, Yevgeny Petrov was awarded with the Correspondent Medal "For Valor" by the North American Newspaper Association "Sevastopol - Europe".
"For heroism shown in the performance of his duties as a war correspondent at the front."
As well he was awarded with the Medal of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
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