Vasily Yan

Who was Vasily Yan?

Vasily Yan. was a Russian writer. Also spelled "Vassily Yan" or just "V. Yan", this is the pen name of Vassily Grigoryevich Yanchevetsky.

Born to a family of teachers, his father was from a Volynskih priests family, who graduated from seminary and taught Latin and Greek at the University Gymnasium.

In 1897, Yan graduated from the historical and philological faculty of St. Petersburg University. Impressions of a two-year tour of Russia form the backbone of his book Notes of a Pedestrian. In 1901–1904 he served as inspector of wells in Turkestan, where he studied Oriental languages and lives of local people. During the Russian-Japanese war, he was a military correspondent for the St. Petersburg News Agency. In 1906–1913, he taught Latin at the first Petersburg Gymnasium. As an organizer of the scouts he met with Colonel Robert Baden-Powell, who came to Russia in 1910.

In the autumn of 1910 Vasily Yan introduced the magazine Pupil. In 1913, he worked as a correspondent in Turkey SPA. In 1914, with the beginning of the First World War - he became SPA military correspondent in Romania. In 1918–1919 he worked in the Kolchak printing shop army camp in Siberia. After the restoration of Soviet power in Achinsk he worked as a teacher, correspondent and director of schools in Uryanhae. He then became the editor of the leading newspaper The Power of labour in Minusinske. That was when he first adopted the pseudonym Yan. In 1923, he moved to Moscow.