Don Aminado

He was born Aminodav Shpolyansky into a Jewish family in Elizavetgrad in the Kherson Governorate of the old Russian empire.

In the decade of the 1910s, he published in various outlets such as Rannee Utro, Novy Satirikon and Krasnyi Smekh, dropping his Jewish name in favour of the pen name Don Aminado.

He lived through the October Revolution and later joined the wave of emigres that escaped the country in the wake of the Russian Civil War.

In Paris, he contributed to Poslednie Novosti, the principal emigre literary journal, until its closure in 1940.

[1][2] Considered one of the leading emigre satirists alongside Teffi and Sasha Chorny, he won the Legion d'Honneur in 1934.