Vladimir Petrovich Stavskii

(real surname, Kirpichni-kov). Born July 30 (Aug. 12), 1900, in Penza; died Nov. 14,1943. Killed at the front in the village of Turki-Perevoz, near the city of Nevel’; buried in the city of Velikie Luki. Soviet Russian writer. Member of the CPSU from 1918.

Stavskii fought in the Civil War (1918–20). During the Great Patriotic War (1941–15) he was a front-line correspondent for centrally operated newspapers. His first book of sketches, We Passed Through (1924), his short-story collection Stronger Than Death (1932), and the play War (1941) all deal with the Civil War. His sketchlike novellas Stanitsa (1928), Gaining Pace (1930, play of the same title staged 1932), and On the Crest (1931–33) are devoted to the reconstruction of the countryside.

Stavskii was secretary of RAPP (Russian Association of Proletarian Writers) from 1928 to 1932 and general secretary of the Writers’ Union of the USSR from 1936 to 1941. He was editor of the magazine Novyi mir (New World) from 1937 to 1943.

A deputy to the first convocation of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Stavskii was awarded the Order of Lenin, four other orders, and various medals.