ARN
YUDELSON (July 17, 1907-1937)
He was born in Riga, Latvia. He received an elementary education. From his youth he was active in the Communist
youth movement. In 1927 he moved to
Poland, lived for a time in Vilna, and then in 1928 left illegally for Soviet
Russia; he lived in Minsk and there graduated from university. Until the trials of 1936-1937, he was an
active leader in the field of Yiddish literature and culture, as well as in the
general activities of the Communist Party in Minsk. He began writing in 1923 in illegal Latvian
Yiddish publications: Yunge pleytses
(Young shoulders), Yung-shturem
(Young storm), and other serials in 1923-1927. He later contributed work to: Emes (Truth), Yungvald (Young forest), and Pyoner
(Pioneer) in Moscow; Prolit
(Proletarian literature) in Kharkov-Kiev; Der
yunger arbeter (The young worker), Der
yunger pyoner (The young pioneer), Oktyabr
(October), and Shtern (Star)—in Minsk;
and in almost all of the Yiddish literary periodicals in Soviet Russia. The critics very warmly received his long
poetic work, “Negoreloye” (as the railroad station at the Byelorussian-German
border was known), in which the hero bids farewell to his childhood and
expresses his great joy in arriving at his new home, the Soviet Union. His later work, Kombinat (Multi-purpose enterprise) (Minsk, 1931), 75 pp., is a
poem about socialist construction in Byelorussia which lauds the productivity
of the Jewish population there. In his
poetry collection, Grenetsn (Borders)
(Minsk, 1934), 149 pp., he engages in a polemic with those who entertain doubts
about patriotism toward their new fatherland.
In this same spirit of ultra-patriotic feeling, he wrote two volumes of
notes: Ba unz in land (With us on the
land) (Minsk, 1934), 75 pp.; Roytfoniker
kolvirt “kolos” (Red-banner collective farm Kolos) with F. Shefner (Minsk,
1934), 104 pp. Other books include: Zangen (Stalks) (1936), 85 pp. His work was represented in Deklamater fun der sovetisher yidisher literatur (Reciter of Soviet Yiddish
literature) (Moscow, 1934); Atake,
almanakh fun roytarmeyishn landshuts-literatur (Attack, almanac of the Red
Army’s national defense literature) (1934).
He also translated from German into Yiddish a volume of poetry by
Berthold Brecht (Minsk, 1937), 96 pp. His
writings were starkly denounced by an official Communist critic who accused
him, on the one hand, of being “under pressure from nationalistic ideological
baggage hostile to the proletariat,” and, on the other, simply renounced him as
a Trotskyist who “served, under a literary mask, the contemptible enemies of
the revolution.” He was arrested in 1937
and died in a camp. His poem, “Land fun
magnit un boyung” (Country of great works and construction), which was published
in the anthology Shtern, no longer
appears in book form, and his name was, after 1937, no longer mentioned in
Soviet Yiddish literature or the press.
Sources:
M. Khashtshevatski, in Prolit
(Kharkov-Kiev) (March-April 1930), p. 102; H. Bloshteyn, in Nayerd (Riga) (January 1932); L. Tsart,
in Shtern (Minsk) (March 1932), pp.
47-52; A. Damesek, in Shtern
(April-May 1935), p. 203, (October 1936), p. 68; Kh. Dunets, in Di royte velt (Kharkov) 3 (1933); Y.
Bronshteyn, Sheferishe problemen fun der yidisher sovetisher poezye
(Creative problems in Soviet Yiddish poetry) (Minsk, 1936), p. 64; N.
Rubinshteyn, Dos yidishe bukh in
sovetn-farband in 1934 (The Yiddish book in the Soviet Union in 1934)
(Minsk, 1934), nos. 132, 151; N. Mayzil, Dos
yidishe shafn un der yidisher shrayber in sovetnfarband (Jewish creation
and the Yiddish writer in the Soviet Union) (New York, 1959), see index; Pisʹmenniki Saveckaj
Belarusi (Writers from Soviet Byelorussia) (Minsk, 1959), pp. 215-16.
Khayim Leyb Fuks
[Additional
information from: Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon
fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New
York, 1986), col. 300; 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. 179-80.]
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