Alexey Panteleev did not immediately become a writer. He is a man of complex fate. He had to neglect, move from place to place and engage in dubious affairs. Lenka Panteleev reliably described many events from his life in the book "The Republic of SKID", which has become a favorite book of several generations of Soviet children and adults.
From the biography of the writer
Alexey (Leonid) Panteleev is the creative pseudonym of the Russian writer Alexei Ivanovich Eremeev. He was born on the 9th (according to a new style - the 22nd) of August 1908 in St. Petersburg. Alexei's father was a Cossack officer, he participated in the war with Japan, distinguished himself in battles, even received the Order of St. Vladimir and the title of nobleman. Panteleev’s mother came from a hereditary merchant family.
In 1916, Alexei entered the Petrograd Real School, but did not graduate from it. Subsequently, he abandoned the film actor courses.
In 1918, Alexei's father went missing. Mother took the children to Yaroslavl province, away from hunger.
In 1921, Alexei returned to Petrograd. Here he was engaged in small business, arranged games of roulette and simply beggar, trying to make ends meet. The events of this period of life, Alexei later described in the autobiographical story "Lenka Panteleev."
Pupil of the school named after Dostoevsky
In the same 1921, the commission on juvenile affairs sent Alexei to re-education in the school named after Dostoevsky. Here he received the nickname, becoming Lenka Panteleev. That was the name of the St. Petersburg “urku”, which the police chased for a long time.
At the school of Dostoevsky (abbreviated as ShKID) Panteleev met Grigory Belykh. During the two years of their stay at the school, the guys became friends. Subsequently, they went together to Kharkov to try their hand at cinema. But nothing came of this venture. Then there was a period of vagrancy. Since 1924, Panteleev and Belykh began to be published in the magazines Smena, Kinonedelya and Behemoth.
