MAKS RIANT

MAKS RIANT (1923-2012)

            He was a poet and essayist, born in Saratov, Russia. He parents were collective farmers in the village of Valdheym (Valdgeym), Birobidzhan, whence they all moved in 1931. He completed elementary and middle school there. He was mobilized in 1941 and fought on the front in WWII. After the war, he graduated from the Khabarovsk Pedagogical Institute and a construction polytechnical school, before returning to Birobidzhan afterward. He began publishing in 1946. During Communist Youth work, he became a journalist and a contributor in 1947 to Birobidzhaner shtern (Birobidzhan star) and to local radio. In 1970 he moved to Samarkand, Uzbekistan. He published his first poems while still in school. In 1995 he settled in Israel. He also wrote for the literary almanac Birobidzhan (Birobodzhan), and from 1961 for Sovetish heymland (Soviet homeland). A cycle of poems by him appeared in Horizontn (Horizons) (Moscow: Sovetski pisatel, 1965). His books: Breyte veltn (Wide worlds) (Moscow: Sovetski pisatel, 1987), 192 pp.; Tsugn kumen tsu der tsayt (Trains come on time), supplement to Sovetish heymland 3 (1988); Mit di oygn fun mayn harts (With the eyes of my heart) (Tel Aviv: Leivick Publishers, 2003), 223 pp.

Sources: Horizontn (Horizons) (Moscow, 1965); Yeshurin archive, YIVO (New York).

Khayim Maltinski 

[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), p. 363.]