Arkady Gaidar

[3] In 1918, Golikov applied for Communist Party membership and started working for the local newspaper Molot as a correspondent.

In August 1918, he became a party member and in December volunteered for the Red Army, having lied about his age.

In January 1919, Golikov went to the front as a Special Unit commander's adjutant, to fight what Soviet biographies referred to as the 'kulak gangs'.

[5][6] As the Great Patriotic War broke out, Gaidar was sent to the front as a special correspondent for the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda.

In 1925, Gaidar's debut novel In the Days of Defeats and Victories was published, followed by Life For Nothing and The Mystery of a Mountain, a sci-fi novel and, most notably, R.V.S.

(1925) which formed a blueprint for his career as a children's writer, telling stories of front-line camaraderie and the romanticism of the revolutionary struggle.

In the early 1930s, several articles on Gaidar's works appeared in the Soviet press, Konstantin Fedin being his major supporter and mentor.

His mother, Natalya Arkadyevna Golikova (née Salkova), also a teacher (after the Revolution a doctor), was a daughter of a Tsarist Army officer.