Soviet prose writer noted for his vivid naturalistic realism, one of the most original writers of the 1920s.

Born into a poor family on the border of Siberia and Turkistan, Ivanov ran away from home to become a clown in a travelling circus. He later was a wanderer, labourer, and itinerant entertainer. He served in the Red Army during the civil war that followed the 1917 Revolution.

In 1920 Ivanov went to Petrograd (now St. Petersburg), where he became associated with the Serapion Brothers, a literary group whose members admired and imitated the Romanticism of the early 19th-century German writer E.T.A. Hoffmann. He also came under the influence of Maksim Gorky. His graphic stories of the civil war—Partizany (1921; “Partisans”), Bronepoezd 14–69 (1922; Armoured Train 14–69), Tsvetnyye vetra (1922; “Coloured Winds”)—quickly established his reputation as a writer. Set in Asiatic Russia, the stories have a distinctive regional flavour.

A change in official literary policies in the late 1920s required Ivanov to revise his works to harmonize with the new principles. In 1927 he reworked Armoured Train 14–69— which had been severely criticized for neglecting the role of the Communist Party in the partisan movement—into a play, correcting this flaw. The drama enjoyed immediate success and has become one of the classics of the Soviet repertory. In his works composed at this time Ivanov had to temper much of the naturalism, which was considered a negative quality, that had produced such powerful effects in his earlier work. Moreover, his own attitude had changed; he turned from the affirmation of physical and instinctual life to psychological analysis. His major later works include a collection of tales, Taynoye taynykh (1927; “The Secret of Secrets”), and an autobiographical novel, Pokhozhdeniya fakira (1934–35; The Adventures of a Fakir).

During World War II Ivanov worked as a war correspondent for the newspaper Izvestiya. His wartime experiences provided material for a new collection of stories and a novel, neither favourably received by Soviet critics. His subsequent work is generally regarded as inferior to the early, unrevised stories.