AVROM SHOYKHET

AVROM SHOYKHET (April 14, 1891-October 1941)

            He was a poet, born in Chudniv, Zhytomyr district, Volhynia (Ukraine), into the family of a craftsman. He worked as a laborer from his youth and joined the revolutionary movement. After the 1917 Revolution, he moved to Kiev where he worked in the Commissariat for People’s Health. He served in the army (1920-1921), and after returning to Kiev in late 1921, he worked as an instructor in the propaganda division (agitprop) in a Party school. In those early years, he began writing poetry, joined the literary group “Vidervuks” (New growth), and published the poetry collection Ongrif (Assault) (Kiev: Vidervuks, 1922), 30 pp., with an introduction by Dovid Hofshteyn. He published poems in Shtrom (Current) and other Soviet Yiddish serials as well. His work also appeared in the collection Yugnt (Youth) (Kharkov: Central Committee, Komyug, 1922). In 1922 he moved to Moscow, from time to time publishing poems and articles, contributing to literary and social life. He taught in the philosophy department of the Institute of Red Professors and gave lectures in the literature division of Moscow State University. He later became a researcher in economics and planning in the Institute of Industrial Economic Research of the People’s Commissariat for Heavy Industry. On the eve of WWII, he was working as an economist in the All-Soviet People’s Commissariat for Financial Affairs and for the publishing house of Zemlya i fabrika (Land and factory). In July 1941 he joined the Moscow militia and fell at the front near Moscow.

Sources: Chone Shmeruk, comp., Pirsumim yehudiim babrit-hamoatsot, 1917-1961 (Jewish publications in the Soviet Union, 1917-1961) (Jerusalem, 1962), see index; Sovetish heymland (Moscow) 4 (1966), p. 160.

Berl Cohen 

[Additional information from: Chaim Beider, Leksikon fun yidishe shrayber in ratn-farband (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers in the Soviet Union), ed. Boris Sandler and Gennady Estraikh (New York: Congress for Jewish Culture, Inc., 2011), pp. 378-79.]