Under the constellation of Ilf
On the 125th anniversary of his birth
Ilya Ilf was born into a family of bank employees and graduated from a technical school. From there, he worked successively in a drafting office, a telephone exchange, an aircraft factory, and a hand grenade factory. It later became clear that his talent lay in literary rather than accounting work, and in 1923, Ilya Ilf moved to Moscow, where he apparently found his final profession—he became a writer, working for newspapers and humor magazines.