Nikolai Ostrovsky

Nikolai Ostrovsky
Nikolai Ostrovsky
Born(1904-09-29)29 September 1904
Viliia, Volhynian Governorate, Russian Empire
Died22 December 1936(1936-12-22) (aged 32)
Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Resting placeNovodevichy Cemetery, Moscow
OccupationNovelist, Chekist, Communist Party member
LanguageRussian
NationalityUkrainian
Alma materSverdlov Communist University
GenreSocialist Realist
Notable worksHow the Steel Was Tempered
SpouseRaisa Porfyrivna (née Motsyuk)

Nikolai Alekseyevich Ostrovsky (Russian: Николай Алексеевич Островский; Ukrainian: Микола Олексійович Островський, romanizedMykola Oleksiiovych Ostrovskyi; 29 September 1904 – 22 December 1936) was a blind Soviet socialist realist writer. He is best known for his novel How the Steel Was Tempered.

After living for years with paralysis, illness and blindness due to congenital ankylosing spondylitis as well as complications from typhus, Ostrovsky died on 22 December 1936, aged 32. Because of his early death, he was unable to complete his second novel, Born of the Storm, on the Russian Civil War.

Quotations

The dearest possession of any person is life. It is given only once, and it must not be lived only to feel tortured by regrets for wasted years or to know the burning shame of a mean and petty past; so live that when dying you have a right to say: all my life, all my strength was given to the finest cause in the world – the fight for the liberation of humankind.

References

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