Artyom Vesyoly (1899–1938, real name Nikolai Ivanovich Kochkurov) was born in Samara on the Volga. His father was a carter and loader, and the son, who started work at fourteen, would later describe his own working career as follows: ‘factory – tramp – newspaper seller – cabman – clerk – agitator – Red Guard – newspaper – party work – Red Army soldier – student – sailor – writer.’ He joined the Bolshevik Party in March 1917, aged seventeen, and was soon involved in the Civil War of 1918–1921. After being wounded in action in June 1918, having enough schooling to read and write – the first of his family to acquire literacy – he was assigned to propagandist duties. He travelled the front-line areas in an ‘agit-train’, producing propaganda material and editing local Bolshevik newspapers.

At this stage of his life, Vesyoly's political and ideological views accorded fully with those of the revolutionary leadership. When in the spring of 1918 he met the Czech writer Jaroslav Hašek, then in Samara and a staunch supporter of the Bolshevik cause, the two argued heatedly: Hašek upheld Russia's pre-revolutionary literacy legacy, while Vesyoly spoke fiercely in favour of unceremoniously consigning Pushkin and Tolstoy to the dustbin of history.

When the Civil War ended, Vesyoly was able to attend the Moscow Institute of Literature, founded by the poet Valery Bryusov, and study the craft of writing. He did not complete the course, but soon began to publish fiction and drama, most of it based on his experience of the social upheaval brought by war and revolution. Recognised as a young writer of great promise, he was a founding member of the Pereval group of writers and briefly a member of RAPP (the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers).

The novel Russia Washed in Blood (Rossiya, krovyu umytaya), first published in full in 1932 but further developed in subsequent editions, is the best-known of his works. In it, he relied heavily on his own experience of the Civil War and on the letters he received from newly literate soldiers and veterans. He also incorporated, in revised form, some novellas which he had published separately in the 1920s.