Alexander Grin (Alexander Stepanovich Grinevsky) was born into a family of an exiles from Poland living in Slobodskaya Vyatka Province. Sometimes called Alexander Green in English, the proper name is Alexander Grin.
In 1896 at age 16, Grin finished a four-year Vyatka college and left for Odessa.
He ran away from his home and lived as a tramp, worked as a sailor, and a fisherman, sought gold in the Urals, and later served the army, where he joined the Socialist revolutionary party.
Grinevsky read avidly, with Robert Louis Stevenson and Jules Verne among his favorites, and he even reportedly carried a portrait of Edgar Allen Poe with him everywhere he went
His works were published starting from 1906. The first short story, titled “Merit of Private Panteleev ” (Zasluga ryadovogo Panteleeva) was of political agitation and copies of the brochure were confiscated by police.

Grin was arrested in Sevastopol for propaganda and served his sentence in prison and three exiles.
In 1905 Grin moved to St. Petersburg after his first exile. His His ealier career was known for poetry and short stories, but not yet the romantic escapes he discovered after the revolution. Areested and exiled several times, Grin moved to St. Petersburg several times.
In 1912 the Grin returned to St. Petersburg, mainly writing short stories at that time.
After the disappointment of the Bolshevik revolution in 1918, the major theme of his writing was the collision of freedom and loss of freedom, expressed in his novels The Shining World (Blistayushii mir) (1923), Jessie and Morgiana (1929) and The Road to Nowhere (Doroga nikuda, 1930).

Crimson Sails on the Neva
Crimson Sails celebrated in St. Petersburg
Grin’s symbolic romantic story Scarlet Sails (Alye Parusa, 1922) is considered to be his best work.Certainly, it is his most popular legacy. Grin created his own exotic land in his stories, “Grinlandia”, in which pure-hearted souls search for love and adventure and have a constant poetic dialogue with the sea. “Scarlet Sails” has been called “the Russian ‘Treasure Island’”.


In 1924 Alexander Grin moved to Theodosia, Crimea. Gradually his writings came to be in conflict with principles of the communist party, and so his publications were getting scarcer and scarcer. In 1930 the writer moved to the town of Staryi Krym (not far from Theodosia), where two years later he died of stomach cancer. This is where he was laid to rest.