Yevgeni Petrov, born Evgeni Petrovich Kataev on November 30, 1902, in Odessa, Russian Empire, now Odesa, Ukraine, was the son of Petr Kataev, a teacher. Petrov graduated from the Classical Gymnasium in 1920 and became a news correspondent for the Ukrainian Telegraph Agency.
He worked as a criminologist and homicide inspector in Odessa from 1921 to 1923, before moving to Moscow in 1923 to become a journalist for the Soviet magazine "Krasny Perets" (Red Pepper). With the help of his brother, Valentin Kataev, a popular writer, Petrov made connections in the Moscow literary milieu.
In 1925, Petrov met Ilya Ilf, and a year later they started writing together. Their first novel, "Dvenadtsat Stulev" (Twelve Chairs),was published in 1928 and introduced the main character, Ostap Bender, a charming and smooth criminal. The book was an instant success with the general public but was criticized by Soviet critics for satirizing the loss of civility and degradation of cultural values in the Soviet Union.
Their second novel, "Zolotoi Telenok" (Golden Calf),published in 1931, became a bestseller in the Soviet Union and was later adapted into several films and TV shows. In 1970, an American adaptation was made by director Mel Brooks, starring Frank Langella as Ostap Bender.
Ilf and Petrov traveled across Europe in 1933-1934 and made a journey across the United States by car in 1935, which inspired their popular book "Odnoetazhnaya Amerika" (The One-Storey America) in 1937. Ilya Ilf died of tuberculosis on April 13, 1937, and Yevgeni Petrov died in a plane crash on July 2, 1942, on a flight from Sevastopol to Moscow.
In 1948, Andrei Zhdanov attacked many Soviet intellectuals and banned the books of Ilf and Petrov, among others. The Communist Party ordered their books removed from all public libraries across the Soviet Union. Eight years later, the ban was lifted during the political "Thaw" initiated by Nikita Khrushchev in 1956.
