RIVE BALYASNE (RIVA BALYASNY)

RIVE BALYASNE (RIVA BALYASNY) (1910-September 28, 1980)

A Soviet author of poetry and prose, she was born into a poor family in Radomyśl, Ukraine. She was raised in a children’s home and went to work at a young age in a shoe factory. She graduated from a factory school. She debuted in the world of literature in 1928, publishing poetry in Yiddish publications in Kiev, Kharkov, Minsk, and Moscow, and she contributed to various collections, such as Komsomol (Communist Youth League) publications. She was a member of the Kiev literary group “Yunge gvardye” (Young guard). Her love and landscape lyrics were tinged with Ukraine’s natural countryside. She brought out two poetry collections prior to the outbreak of WWII (see below). During the war years, she lived in Bashkiria (Bashkortoshan). When she returned to Kiev, she had written a great deal but published little, because the opportunities to put her work into print in Yiddish were extremely limited. When in 1949 the persecutions of Jewish intellectuals began, she too was arrested. After being rehabilitated in 1956, she returned home and first gained the chance to publish her work in 1961, when the journal Sovetish heymland (Soviet homeland) appeared in Moscow. She published poetry and brought out in Moscow a poetry collection, and in her poetry cycles also appeared in Sovetish heymland. Many of her poems were translated into Russian and Ukrainian. Of a broadly conceived work of prose concerning her childhood, entitled Nokh der goldener pave (After the golden peacock), she apparently only published a small fragment. She died in Kiev.

Among her books: In iberuf (Calling back and forth), poems (Kharkov-Kiev, 1934), 262 pp.; Likhtike stezhkes (Bright trails), poems (Kiev, 1940), 90 pp.; a poetry cycle of hers appeared in Horizontn (Horizons) (Moscow, 1965), pp. 24-35; Goldener bleter-fal (Golden falling leaves), poetry (Moscow, 1978).  Her work was included as well in: Komsomolye (Communist Youth) (Kiev, 1938), Shlakhtn (Battles) (Kharkov-Kiev, 1932); and Litkomyug (Literary Communist Youth) (Kharkov-Kiev, 1933).

Sources: Sh. Bryanski, in Kharkover shtern 71 (1934); N. Kabakov, in Minsker oktyabr 108 (1934); Sh. Hirsh, in Kyever proletarishe fon 43 (1934); N. Y. Gotlib, Sovetishe shrayber (Soviet writers) (Montreal, 1945), p. 34; Tsukunft (New York) (March 1945, April 1946); Eynikeyt (Moscow) (June 10, 1947, October 28, 1947); A. Emkin, in Eynikeyt (June 26, 1947); P. Novik, Eyrope, tsvishn milkhome un sholem (Europe, between war and peace) (New York, 1948).

[Additional information from: Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 51; and 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), p. 35.]