Ilya Ehrenburg

Born in 1891, Ehrenburg reported from three wars across half a century, filing copy from the trenches of the First World War, the Spanish Civil War, and the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. His articles during the Great Patriotic War - raw, incendiary, calling for vengeance against the invaders - made him a hero to soldiers and a lightning rod for controversy; he later insisted he meant only armed aggressors, not a people. After Stalin's death in 1953, his novel "The Thaw" gave a name to the slow melt of Soviet repression. He co-edited "The Black Book" with Vasily Grossman, documenting the Holocaust on Soviet soil; authorities banned it as "anti-Soviet" and it wouldn't see print until Jerusalem, 1980. His memoir "People, Years, Life" may be the work that outlasted the rest - a hundred published titles, and the one people still argue over.