Editing Viktor Shklovsky (section)

==Life==
Shklovsky was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. His father was a [[Lithuanian Jews|Lithuanian Jewish]] mathematician (with ancestors from [[Shkloŭ|Shklov]]) who converted to [[Russian Orthodox Church|Russian Orthodoxy]] and his mother was of German-Russian origin. He attended [[St. Petersburg University]].

During the [[First World War]], he volunteered for the Russian Army and eventually became a driving trainer in an [[Armored car (military)|armoured car]] unit in St. Petersburg. There, in 1916, he founded [[OPOYAZ]] (Obshchestvo izucheniya POeticheskogo YAZyka—Society for the Study of Poetic Language), one of the two groups (with the [[Moscow Linguistic Circle]]) that developed the critical theories and techniques of [[Russian Formalism]].

Shklovsky participated in the [[February Revolution]] of 1917. Subsequently, the [[Russian Provisional Government]] sent him as an assistant [[Commissar]] to the [[Southwestern Front (Russian Empire)|Southwestern Front]] where he was wounded and got an award for bravery. After that he was an assistant Commissar of the Russian Expeditionary Corps in [[Persia]] (see [[Persian campaign (World War I)|Persian Campaign]]).

Shklovsky returned to St. Petersburg in early 1918, after the [[October Revolution]]. During the Civil War he opposed [[Bolshevism]] and took part in an anti-Bolshevik plot organised by members of the [[Socialist-Revolutionary Party]]. After the conspiracy was discovered by the [[Cheka]], Shklovsky went into hiding, traveling in Russia and Ukraine, but was eventually pardoned in 1919 due to his connections with [[Maxim Gorky]], and decided to abstain from political activity. His two brothers were executed by the Soviet regime (one in 1918, the other in 1937) and his sister died from hunger in St. Petersburg in 1919.<ref>Shklovsky, [https://web.archive.org/web/20110614124558/http://magazines.russ.ru/voplit/2002/4/sh22.html Письма внуку. Letters to My Grandson] (In Russian)</ref>

Shklovsky integrated into Soviet society and even took part in the [[Russian Civil War]], serving in the [[Red Army]]. However, in 1922, he had to go into hiding once again, as he was threatened with arrest and possible execution for his former political activities, and he fled via Finland to Germany. In Berlin, in 1923, he published his memoirs about the period 1917–22 under the title ''{{lang|ru|Сентиментальное путешествие, воспоминания}}'' (''{{Transliteration|ru|Sentimental'noe puteshestvie, vospominaniia}}'', ''A Sentimental Journey''), alluding to ''[[A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy]]'' by [[Laurence Sterne]], an author he much admired and whose digressive style had a powerful influence on Shklovsky's writing. In the same year he was allowed to return to the Soviet Union, not least because of an appeal to Soviet authorities that he included in the last pages of his [[epistolary novel]] ''Zoo, or Letters Not About Love''.

The Yugoslav scholar [[Mihajlo Mihajlov]] visited Shklovsky in 1963 and wrote: "I was much impressed by Shklovsky's liveliness of spirit, his varied interests and his enormous culture. When we said goodbye to Viktor Borisovich and started for Moscow, I felt that I had met one of the most cultured, most intelligent and best-educated men of our century."<ref>Mihajlo Mihajlov, ''Moscow Summer'' (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1965), p. 104.</ref>

He died in Moscow in 1984.