Ilina, Natalia Iosifovna

Born May 6 (19), 1914, in St. Petersburg. Soviet Russian writer.

Il’ina emigrated with her parents from Soviet Russia in 1920 and lived in Harbin and Shanghai. During the Great Patriotic War (1941–45), she worked in the Shanghai branch of TASS (Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union). Il’ina’s book of satirical articles, Through Other Eyes: Essays on Shanghai Life, was published in Shanghai in 1946. She arrived in the Soviet Union in 1947, with other repatriates. Il’ina graduated from the Gorky Institute of Literature in 1953. Her articles, parodies, and satirical reviews have been appearing in newspapers and magazines since 1950. Il’ina is the author of the novel Return (books 1–2, 1957–65).