P. M. Usenko

Collection

Holding institution:: Central State Archive and Museum of Literature and Art of Ukraine

Holding institution (official language):: Центральний державний архів-музей літератури і мистецтва України

Scope and content:: Included are the collection creator’s translations (from Yiddish to Ukrainian) of verse by such Jewish poets as Riva Baliasnaia, Khanan Vainerman, and David Hofshtein; a manuscript of a Russian translation of P. M. Usenko’s article “Osher Shvartsman” (1966), to be included in a collection of Shvartsman’s verse that was being prepared by the Khudozhestvennaia literatura Publishing House; letters to P. M. Usenko from such Jewish writers as Z. M. Kats (1934); G. I. Polianker (1943-44); A. G. Prister (1943; enclosed with this letter is a fragment of his play Partisan Pathways, and of journal entries on meeting P. M. Usenko in Comrade Iakov’s partisan detachment); E. Kh. Raitsyn (1948 and undated); M. A. Talalaevskii (1942-43), as well as a letter from Talalaevskii to his wife (1944), with the poem “The Legend” and the story “Spring Sowing” (clippings from the newspaper Stalinskoe znamia) enclosed; R. G. Fefer (inviting P. M. Usenko to take part in a collection of reminiscences about Itzik Fefer, 1973); and photographs of P. M. Usenko in a group of writers, including G. I. Polianker, I. L. Frenkel’, and others.

Administrative/biographical history:: The Ukrainian poet Pavlo Matviiovych [Pavel Matveevich] Usenko (1902-75) was born in the village of Zaochenskoe (now in the Tsarychanka district, Dnipropetrovsk/Dnepropetrovsk region). He studied at the literature department of the Khar’kov Red Professors’ Institute (1921-31). He was the head of the Komsomol [Communist Union of Youth] writers’ association Molodniak (1926-32) and edited the journal of the same name. He served as a war correspondent during the Second World War. His work first appeared in print in 1925. He would produce about twenty collections of poetry; his best works were included in a two-volume Selected Works (1963) and in his posthumous four-volume Collected Works (1982). He also translated works of poetry from languages of other peoples of the USSR. He was awarded the republic’s N. Ostrovskii Komsomol Prize in 1967. He died in Kiev.

Access points: persons/families:: Baliasnaia, Riva; Fefer, Itzik; Fefer, R. G.; Frenkel’, I. L.; Hofshtein, David; Kats, Z. M.; Polianker, Hershl; Prister, A. G.; Raitsyn, E. Kh.; Shvartsman, Osher; Talalaevskii, M. A.; Usenko, Pavlo Matviiovych; Vainerman, Khanan

Subject terms:: Correspondence; Jewish languages; Jewish languages--Yiddish; Literature; Literature--Novels, poetry, and plays; Literature--Writers, poets, and playwrights; Manuscripts; Newspaper clippings; Photographs; Publishing

System of arrangement:: The fond includes a single inventory systematised by document type (literary genre) and chronologically (with letters arranged alphabetically by correspondent name; and translations by language).