Leonid Pervomayskiy

Leonid Solomonovych Pervomayskyi
Леонід Соломонович Первомайський
Leonid Pervomayskyi with his wife Yevdokia (1927)
Born	Illya Shlyomovych Hurevych May 17, 1908 Konstantinograd
Died	December 9, 1973 (aged 65) Kyiv, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union
Burial place	Baikove Cemetery
Occupation	Poet
Awards	Stalin Prize (1946)

Leonid Solomonovych Pervomayskyi (Ukrainian: Леонід Соломонович Первомайський, birth name: Illya Shlyomovych Hurevych; 17 May 1908 – 9 December 1973), was a Jewish-Ukrainian poet, a winner of the 1946 Stalin Prize for literature and a member of the Communist party since 1954.

Pervomayskyi was born in Konstantinograd (now Krasnohrad, Kharkiv region of Ukraine) to the family of a bookbinder. He worked in a factory, then at a library and a newspaper.

He began publishing in 1924 as a novelist, and in 1929 as a poet. During 1941-1945, he was a military reporter of the Pravda newspaper. After the World War II, he published a novel in verse called "Brother's Youth" (Молодість брата, 1947) and numerous collections of poetry. He was engaged in the translation of G. Heine, S.Petefi, Y.Fuchika.

He had been criticized by the Communist Party for the so-called "ideological errors".

Pervomaysky died on 9 December 1973. He was buried in Kyiv at the Baikove Cemetery.

He was a recipient of a number of military and civil decorations.

Awards

• 1946 — USSR State Prize (for poems of the war years)
• 1946 — Stalin Prize of second degree (for collections of poetry «День народження» ("The Birthday") and «Земля» ("The Land"))

References

• Сайт письменника at Leonid Pervomajskij.net.
• Тексти Леоніда Первомайського та про нього
• К.: Головна редакція Української Радянської Енциклопедії (1981); Київ: За редакцією А. В. Кудрицкого; 736 с., іл.