[2] His Ukrainian father was an artist and a mosaicist responsible for the exterior decoration of the Suvorov Museum in Saint Petersburg.

Zoshchenko attended the Faculty of Law at the Saint Petersburg University, but did not graduate due to financial problems.

During World War I, Zoshchenko served in the army as a field officer, was wounded in action several times, and was heavily decorated.

[1] In 1919, during the Russian Civil War, he served for several months in the Red Army before being discharged for health reasons.

He was associated with the Serapion Brothers and attained particular popularity in the 1920s as a satirist, but, after his denunciation in the Zhdanov decree of 1946, Zoshchenko lived in dire poverty.