March 29 in Russian history

1847: 19 years old Leo Tolstoy begins a diary which he will continue for all his life. In the complete set of his works the diaries occupy 13 volumes.

1933: The Literaturnaya Gazeta newspaper published an article by G.Munblit "The book about a shallow world". It was a positive review of a new book written by Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov, "The Golden Calf". The real names of Ilf and Petrov were Ilya Faynzilberg and Yevgeny Kataev. "The Golden Calf" was a sequel of their earlier book, "The Twelve Chairs". Both books are the adventures of a swindler Ostap Bender, somehow similar to the stories about Jeff Peters and Andy Tucker by O'Henry. Unlike O'Henry, though, Ilf and Petrov wrote satyre. They ridiculed everyone and everything, from the aristocrats of the times before the revolution, to Soviet bureaucracy, to the flourishing bourgeois habits of the people pretending to be communists. Though a negative character, Ostap Bender was loved by generations of Soviet readers. I tried to find "The Golden Calf" online, but unfortunately, only some first chapters are available here. The full text of "The Twelve Chairs" is here. Just try some first chapters and, I hope, you'll like it. It's not just incredibly funny, but it might also give some impressions about the life in the early Soviet Union.

BTW, while searching for the text of the books, I found an interesting web-site which I had no time to explore, but which seems promising: SovLit.com.

1945: The troops of the 3rd Belorussian front finished the liquidation of the surrounded Eastern Prussian group of the fascist army to the south-west of Koenigsberg. The troops of the 2nd Belorussian front continued the liquidation of the fascist troops in the eastern part of Gdansk (Danzig) and to the north from Gdynia.