MARK MRATSHNI

MARK MRATSHNI (1892-March 29, 1975)

            He was born with the surname Klavanski in Kovno.  He attended religious elementary school, graduating in 1911 from a Russian high school.  He studied in Leipzig, Paris, and later in New York, where he settled in 1934 and received his doctoral degree in psychology.  He was active in the anarchist movement in Russia (which he left in 1922) and in America, whence he arrived in 1928.  Until 1934 he was a teacher in the Workmen’s Circle schools of Detroit and Los Angeles.  He published numerous articles current events, essays of criticism, and on anarchist theoretical matters.  Over the years 1934-1940, he edited the anarchist newspaper Fraye arbeter-shtime (Free voice of labor) in New York.  He died in New York.

Source: P. Konstan (A. Thorn), in Fraye arbeter-shtime (New York) (May-June 1975).

Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), cols. 384-85.