Ilf and Petrov

Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov wrote The Twelve Chairs and The Golden Calf — and created Ostap Bender: the "grand strategist," the "son of a Turkish subject," a man who knew four hundred comparatively honest ways of relieving people of their money.

Ilf (Yehiel Fainzilberg) was born in Odessa in 1897; Petrov (Yevgeny Kataev) in the same city in 1902. They met in Moscow, at a newspaper, and wrote together — every sentence composed side by side.

In The Twelve Chairs (1928), Bender hunts for diamonds hidden in one of a set of chairs. In The Golden Calf (1931), he is a millionaire — and has no idea what to do with it in a Soviet country.

Ilf died of tuberculosis in 1937. Petrov was killed in a plane crash in 1942. Bender remained.