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Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin was born on 14th February 1855 in what is now Dnipro in the Ukraine, but then part of the Russian Empire.

After attending secondary school he studied at the Saint Petersburg Mining Institute.

Wars between and on behalf of Empires were a regular feature of the decades then. Garshin volunteered to serve in the Russian army at the beginning of the Russo-Turkish War in 1877.

He began as a private in the Balkans campaign and was wounded in action. By the end of the w...