Ilya Ilf (Iehiel-Leyb Arnoldovich Faynzilberg, 1897-1937)
Answers to a questionnaire. 1936
Autograph document signed ('I. Ilf'), questionnaire of the Union of Soviet Writers, 28 December 1936.

In Russian. Autograph responses to a printed questionnaire, four pages, 290 x 213mm, contemporary annotations in ink and red pencil.

Answers to a questionnaire. Ilf states that his nationality is Jewish; social status – writer; spoken languages – Russian; and confirms that he is a member of SSP (Soviet Union of Writers) and that his published novels and stories have never been prohibited.

Along with Evgeny Petrov (see lot 142) Ilf made up the famous writing duo Ilf and Petrov, who produced a series of highly successful satirical texts in the years after 1928: Vladimir Nabokov described them as 'wonderfully gifted writers'. In 1935-36 they travelled in the United States, an expedition chronicled in the book Odnoetazhnaya Amerika (1936), which was illustrated in later editions with Ilf's striking photographs. It was during this trip that Ilf suffered a recurrence of tuberculosis, and he died on 13 April 1937, only a few months after completing this questionnaire. The Union of Soviet Writers was founded in 1934 by the Central Committee of the Communist Party: membership was effectively compulsory for professional writers.

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