Victor Ardov: biography, creativity

Today we will talk about a talented person, whose name is not familiar to everyone, but who made his significant contribution to the development of satirical literature. Victor Ardov is a writer whose works are still being discussed by true connoisseurs of this field.

He was born at the beginning of the century and went through a difficult journey through various historical events and turning points in history. And all this time he did not cease to create literary masterpieces.

Victor Ardov: family

To begin with, we would like to talk about the most important thing - what kind of roots does this talented writer have. Ardov Victor Efimovich was born in 1900 in October. There is no exact date of birth, because in connection with the update of the calendar, all people born in that period of time have two birthdays. Here and at Victor - on October, 8th or 21.

It happened in Voronezh. Father Victor - Efim Moiseevich Siegberman, engineer railway worker, graduated from the then prestigious Institute of Technology in Kharkov. Being a Jew, he was a member of the national community in Voronezh. The grandfather of the writer was the owner of the clinic for dental treatment, in which he himself worked.

As one can understand, Viktor 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 started working in a cabaret. There he performed the role of entertainer, and also acted as an actor. Seven years later, Ardov had 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 offered to your attention, began his creative 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 writing satirical stories and made illustrations for them himself.

Even before the war began, he managed to create many comedies both independently and together with other talented writers:

• "Skloq" (co-author - Nikulin LV);
• "Article 114 of the Criminal Code" (co-author - Nikulin LV);
• "Tarakanovshchina" (co-author - Nikulin);
• "Name-day" (co-author - Mass VZ);
• "A small trump card."

His work ("Name-day") was even staged in the Moscow theater. In addition, the author wrote wonderful humoresques 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. In the forty-second the writer went voluntarily to the front and served the whole war as a military correspondent in 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 printed under his real name. By his father, he had a Jewish surname Sigberman, but as if he forgot about it as soon as he started to create.

Many people ask themselves: why such a pseudonym? There is no precise explanation at the moment, but there is one most probable version. Jews have two subethnic groups, which sometimes converge in one family. So it was with Victor. On the one hand, his ancestors became Ashkenazi, and on the other - Sephardim. The writer initially took the Sephardic name for himself, but then the prefix somehow disappeared, and remained the pseudonym of the Ard.

Famous friends

Ardov (Sigberman) Victor Efimovich lived at one time with the great figures of literature and communicated with many of them personally. With some, he had very close friendships. Having studied many different sources, it can be stated with certainty that among Victor's friends there were such famous writers as Mayakovsky VV, Bulgakov MA, Zoshchenko MM, Ilf IA and Petrov EP, and Also actress Ranevskaya F. G. About them the writer tells in his book of memoirs.

And some of the 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 IA, Pasternak BL, Tsvetaeva MI and other well-known names Ardov often spoke of his close friends. Especially closely, he and his relatives communicated with Anna Akhmatova. The famous poet was so close to this family that her monument was installed in the courtyard of their Moscow house.

Personal life

Victor Ardov was married twice. His first wife was Irina Ivanova, of whom nothing is known except her name. There is no exact data even when exactly this event happened for the first time. Maybe at that time there was a problem with the documentation, and so now there is a lot of confusion with the restoration of lost information.

But it is precisely known that the second time the writer married in 1933. His wife this time was the actress Olshevskaya Nina. She gave birth to Victor two sons: Misha and Boria. In addition, the writer had a brother Mark, who worked, like their grandfather, in the field of medicine and became in this field a very famous figure. Ardov maintained a kinship relationship with his uncle on the maternal line - 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 include humorous stories, sketches, essays and satirical articles. He wrote scripts for the films "The Bright Path" and "Happy Flight."

Already after the death of the writer, who overtook him on February 28, 1976, in Moscow, a book was published with his memoirs called Etudes. The list of Ardov's works is very large, and almost every one of them was very popular at the time. They came out, beginning in 1926 under the following names:

• "You like to skate";
• "Come tomorrow";
• "Kavardak on the air";
• "The cream of society";
• "The insidious lunatic";
• "Sugar Medovich";
• "Your friends";
• "Sore place";
• "A nightmare of regional importance";
• "Samples of eloquence";
• "Work of the actor";
• "Grandmothers, grandmothers";
• "Errors of the Registry";
• "Flowers, berries";
• "Two in the hole."

After the death of the writer, several other collections were published:

• In 1980, "Humorous Stories" came out;
• In 1987 - the "Soviet story";
• In 2005 - "Great and funny";
• In 2011 - "Intelligent children";
• In 2012 - "Poodle Language".

As we see, over the years the writer's works have not lost relevance. After all, humor has no boundaries, no barriers. This is what we can observe in the work of the famous satirist Victor Siegberman (Ardova).