Born of poor laborers, Ostrovsky's education was limited to a few years of elementary school. He worked at various jobs such as stoker's mate and kitchen helper during his early teenage years. When the Germans invaded the Ukraine in 1918, he joined the Komsomol of the Red Army and served in a cavalry regiment, though he was only 14. He was wounded in 1920 near Odessa and again at Lvov. He spent a few months in hospital in Kiev, before being released from the army on medical grounds. Suffering from acute rheumatism and the effects of typhus, he was declared an invalid in 1922. Nevertheless, he continued working in various positions for the Soviet government as Komsomol secretary, Red Army Commisar and Communist Party member. His health continued to deteriorate so that, by 1929, he was both blind and partially paralyzed. In 1930, he began contributing articles to newspapers and journals. In 1932, he was named to the Association of Proletariat Writers in Moscow. In 1933, he published his masterpiece, How the Steel Was Tempered, which became obligatory reading throughout the Soviet era. In 1934, he was made a member of the Union of Soviet Writers. In 1935, he was awarded the Order of Lenin. At his death in 1936 he had begun his second novel, Born of the Storm, but this was left incomplete. |
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