Arkady Averchenko was the funniest man of his age — and one of the bitterest. They called him the "king of laughter"; all Russia read the magazine Satirikon under his editorship. Then came the revolution, and there was nothing left to laugh at — or the only funny thing left was to die.
He was born in 1881 in Sevastopol. His schooling was modest, but he read a great deal. In St. Petersburg he became a journalist, an editor, an author. Satirikon, from 1908 on, was something never seen before: sharp, modern, urban humor without the tedium of the censor.
After 1917 he emigrated. In Prague he wrote "A Dozen Knives in the Back of the Revolution," a collection Lenin read and pronounced upon: "A talented little book. Malicious. But how masterfully written." It was probably the most flattering notice an enemy ever gave him.
In emigration he pined, fell ill, and kept writing. He died in 1925 in Prague, in a hospital, at forty-four. His humor is neither cruel nor kind but exact: he simply saw people as they are.