A Russian press correspondent in the Paris of 1912, who was an early friend and collector of Picasso’s and came to know Hemingway well at the time of the Spanish Civil War, ILYA EHRENBURG is today a novelist noted for his satire and for his discerning criticism of Western and Soviet literature. His novels, THE STORM and THE THAW, were both published in this country, and the latter was the subject of considerable controversy in 1955.