His parents, Marfa Loginovna and Stepan Ivanov, came from peasant farming families, but he was not involved in the farm, living in the district center where his father worked as head of the district department of Soyuzpechat'.
His creative activity began in 1948 as a journalist in the newspaper Priirtyshskaya pravda (Semipalatinsk), served in the military, then was the editor of the regional newspaper Leninskoe znamya in the Novosibirsk Oblast.
From 1954 he began to publish stories; his first collection was Alkiny pesni (Alka's songs, 1958).
The main themes of his works are the revolution in the Siberian villages, collectivization, and World War II.
[2] Another TV series was based on his novel Shadows Disappear at Noon (ru:Тени исчезают в полдень).