From 1928 to 1930, Varshavsky was on active military duty in
Leningrad, serving in the Baltic
naval aviation. Varshavsky edited the first air force newspaper, Vozdushnik Baltiki, and joined the
Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP). In 1930, after naval discharge, he became an executive editor of the magazines Zalp and Stroyka. From 1932 until 1937 Varshavsky was in charge of literature and drama broadcasting at the Leningrad radio committee whilst serving as head of Critics and Bibliography at the newspaper
Leningradskaya Pravda. He was a member of the
Union of Soviet Writers from its foundation in 1934. Sergei Varshavsky published a number of works on history and literature, as well as many art, literary and history of art criticism pieces in Moscow and Leningrad newspapers and magazines. From April 1937 to the start of
World War II he was editorial secretary of the Leningrad branch of the Union of Theatre Workers of the Russian Federation and an editor of the Leningrad film studio
LenTechFilm. From 1931 to the end of his life he collaborated with the writer B.Rest (which was the pen-name of Yuliy Isaakovich Shapiro) and published as co-authors. Their first major work — the book
The Hermitage. — was published by the Iskusstvo publishers in 1939. They then wrote a book about the history of the
Russian Museum, but its publication was prevented by the start of the
Great Patriotic War. During the war, Varshavsky and B. Rest worked as war correspondents and took part in the defence of Leningrad,
Sevastopol and of the Arctic while publishing articles and books about heroic naval aviation pilots. However, one of their short stories
An Incident Over Berlin, along with the writings of
Akhmatova and
Zoshchenko, was subjected to stern criticism in the infamous Communist Party Central Committee Ordinance of August 14, 1946 ''On the magazines 'Zvezda' and 'Leningrad''', also known as
Zhdanov Decree, after which the magazine Leningrad ceased to exist, while Varshavsky and B. Rest lost the opportunity to be published for five years and therefore could not make a living by writing. After the hiatus, the first work of the co-writers was an essay
On the Rafts published in magazine Zvezda in 1951. In the following years S.Varshavsky and B.Rest wrote and published three documentary novels:
Ordeal of the Hermitage - their most significant writing,
Near the Winter Palace and
A Ticket for the Entire Eternity. Together with their first book
The Hermitage this body of work tells readers the history of one of the largest art collections in the world from the time of its foundation by
Catherine the Great in the 18th century until the end of the World War II. The text of the novel
Ordeal of the Hermitage was used by the publishing house Aurora to compile three illustrated albums about the history of the Hermitage museums during the siege of Leningrad. == Collecting ==