Boris Solomonovitch Schnaiderman was born on May 17, 1917, and died on May 18, 2016.

He was a Brazilian translator, writer, and essayist.

Boris went to Odessa when he had just more than one year, living there until he was eight years old, when he came to Brazil.

Boris Schnaiderman was the first teacher of Russian literature of University of São Paulo, in 1960, despite being graduated in agronomy.

Schnaiderman translated the great Russian writers and poets, like Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gorky, Babel, Pasternak, Pushkin and Mayakovsky.

At age eight, before leaving USSR, he saw the filming the classical scene from the Odessa Steps of the legendary Sergey Eisenstein’s film The Battleship Potemkin.

However, Boris only understood what he was seeing after watching the movie in the cinema.

Schnaiderman became a Brazilian naturalized citizen in 1941 and fought in the World War II in the Brazilian Expeditionary Force, an experience that inspired him to write the romance Guerra em Surdina (“Muted War”).

Because of the way that the Russian culture was perceived in the Military dictatorship period in Brazil, his positions against the repression and because he has Soviet passport, Boris Schnaiderman was arrested while he was lecturing.

Boris received the Prize of Translation by the Academia Brasileira de Letras, in 2003.

Schnaiderman was the first person who translated to Portuguese classical Russian books directly from the Russian language; before this, indirect translations which were put down to be very common.

During 2007, Schnaiderman also received the Medal of Pushkin from the Russian government.

Boris Schnaiderman passed away at 99 yrs old.