Gubarev was born in Rostov-on-Don (modern-day
Rostov Oblast of
Russia). According to the official Soviet biography, his parents were teachers. In reality his father, Georgy Vitalievich Gubarev, came from an ancient family of
Don Cossacks of
Russian nobility; during the
Russian Civil War he fought
Bolsheviks as part of the 6th Don Cossack Regiment and the
2nd Combined Cossack Division, then left for
Poland in 1920, and by 1951 he arrived to the
United States. He published articles, monographs and books dedicated to the
history of the Cossacks, including a Cossack Encyclopedia in three volumes where he mentions Vitaly and his brother Igor. Vitaly's mother Antonina Pavlovna Gubareva came from a
priest's family. She raised the children by herself. Vitaly spent his childhood at the
Kushchyovskaya stanitsa where he finished the secondary school. He was studying alongside his future wife Yulia Levteri (they got married in 1936 and gave birth to Gubarev's only daughter Valeria who served as a prototype for the main character in his
Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors novel). At the age of 14 he published his first short story "Rotten Tree" in a local children's magazine. In 1931 he started to work as a journalist in
Komsomolskaya Pravda and
Pionerskaya Pravda where he also served as the main editor at one point. He was among the first to cover the murder of
Pavlik Morozov in the articles ''Kulak's Reprisal
and One of Eleven'' which were later reworked into the novel
Pavlik Morozov and a play of the same name. In 1951 he wrote his first fantasy novel
Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors which was also reworked into a play a year later. It gained enormous success and has been regularly reprinted up to this day. In 1963
Aleksandr Rou adapted it into a movie
Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors with Gubarev serving as a screenwriter. His second wife, an actress
Tamara Nosova, played one of the supporting roles. It was named "Best children's film of 1963" at the all-Union poll conducted by the
Soviet Screen magazine, while the title "Kingdom of crooked mirrors" itself turned into an
idiom. During later years Gubarev published a number of other popular fantasy books such as a comedy
The Three on Island (1959) adapted as a 1986 cartoon, a children's science fiction novel
Adventure to the Morning Star (1961) and a fairy tale
In the Far Far Away Kingdom (1970) adapted as a movie of the same name (director Evgeny Sherstobitov). Gubarev has been awarded the
Order of the Badge of Honour twice. == Literature works ==