Don-Aminado

Don Aminado (1888–1957) was a Russian emigre writer. He was born Aminodav Shpolyansky into a Jewish family in Elizavetgrad in the Kherson Governorate of the old Russian empire. He studied law in Odessa and Kiev, and showed literary promise during his student years. In the decade of the 1910s, he published in various outlets such as Rannee Utro, Novy Satirikon and Krasnyi Smekh, dropping his Jewish name in favour of the pen name Don Aminado.