Nikolai Alekseyevich Ostrovsky (Russian: Николай Алексеевич Островский; Ukrainian: Микола Олексійович Островський, romanized: Mykola Oleksiiovych Ostrovskyi; 29 September 1904 – 22 December 1936) was a Soviet socialist realist writer.

Ostrovsky was born in the village of Viliya (today a village in Rivne Raion (until 2020 it was situated in Ostroh Raion), Rivne Oblast) in the Volhynian Governorate (Volhynia),[citation needed] then part of the Russian Empire, into a Ukrainian working-class family.

[1] According to the official biography,[full citation needed] when the Germans occupied the town in the spring of 1918, Ostrovsky ran errands for the local Bolshevik underground.

In 1923 he was appointed Commissar of the Red Army's Second Training Battalion and Komsomol secretary for Berezdiv in western Ukraine.

Undaunted by his immobility and blindness, in 1930, he began work on his first novel, How the Steel Was Tempered, which became renowned and influential in the Communist world.

After living for years with paralysis, illness and blindness due to congenital ankylosing spondylitis as well as complications from typhus, Ostrovsky died on 22 December 1936, aged 32.

They preserve his study and bedroom, while other exhibits include showcases of the achievements of disabled people like Nikolai Fenomenov and Ludmilla Rogova.