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Boris Zhitkov, author of adventure and animal stories, was born in Novgorod., as well as the novel about the 1905 revolution, “Viktor Vavich,” which is considered one of the most underrated works of the 20th century.

The cadets, each with their own twist, especially the cavalrymen, accepted the honor. Vavich vowed to himself every time: "When I become an officer, I'll be smitten with scoundrels without a pass. He'll salute me like this, and I'll say, 'G-asspodin cadet, come this way.' And I'll beckon with my finger like this. A bit nasty."

His father taught mathematics at a teacher training college. His mother was a pianist. He spent his childhood in Odessa, UkraineAt the gymnasium I became friends with By Korney Chukovsky. He graduated from the physics and mathematics department at Novorossiysk University. During the revolutionary year of 1905, he was part of a student combat brigade that defended the Jewish quarter from pogroms.

I knew that in French, "coward" and "scoundrel" are the same word—"lyash." And true, I thought: cowardice leads to meanness.

He worked as a navigator, captain, ichthyologist, shipbuilding engineer, and physics and drawing teacher. He ran a technical school. He traveled extensively.

I started asking people:
— Does anyone have a cat? I'll even pay you money, just give me some.
And they started getting angry at me:
"Who cares about cats now? There's hunger everywhere, and we ourselves have nothing to eat <…>"
I walked further and saw that many rabbit holes had been dug up. The cats had come from the city, dug the holes wider, driven the rabbits out, and started living like wild animals ("The Stray Cat")

He wrote a series of stories for children, "What I Saw" and "What Happened." A novel Victor Vavich He considered this story of man's moral decline against the backdrop of revolutionary events to be his life's work. The complete three-book edition was destroyed in 1941 due to a negative review by Alexander Fadeyev. The novel was published in its entirety only in 1999—Lydia Chukovskaya preserved one of the copies of the destroyed edition. Meanwhile, Boris Pasternak wrote of it:

This is the best thing ever written about [1]905. What a shame that no one knows this book. I found Zhitkov's widow and kissed her hand.

Boris Zhitkov died in 1938 from lung cancer.