Looking through Ilf and Petrov's
journalism, I came across a piece entitled Savanarylo (1932). In
Nabokov's novel Podvig ("Glory," 1931-32, written in 1930), the
characters, Martyn Edelweiss and Sonya Zilanova, invent Zoorlandia, a
northern tyranny, one of whose political leaders is a
certain Savan-na-rylo ("Shroud-on-[each-]snout;" unfortunately, I
don't have the English text of "Glory" at hand and cannot look up
Nabokov's English rendering of the punning name). I'm not an expert, but
I don't think that Ilf and Petrov have
consciously plagiarized from Sirin (in fact, I'm not
sure if they read him at all).
Interestingly, some pieces by Ilf and Petrov are
signed "F. Tolstoevsky" (I wonder if Nabokov, who similarly crosses Tolstoy
and Dostoevsky in one of his interviews, was aware that
this portmanteau name had been used before).
Alexey Sklyarenko