Leonid Pervomayskiy

Leonid Solomonovych Pervomayskyi (Ukrainian: Леонід Соломонович Первомайський, birth name: Illya Shlyomovych Hurevych; 17 May 1908 – 9 December 1973), was a Jewish-Ukrainian poet, a winner of the 1946 Stalin Prize for literature and a member of the Communist Party since 1954.

Pervomayskyi was born in Konstantinograd (now Krasnohrad, Kharkiv region of Ukraine) to the family of a bookbinder. He worked in a factory, then at a library and a newspaper.

He began publishing in 1924 as a novelist, and in 1929 as a poet. During 1941-1945, he was a military reporter of the Pravda newspaper.^[1] After the World War II, he published a novel in verse called "Brother's Youth" (Молодість брата, 1947) and numerous collections of poetry. He was engaged in the translation of G. Heine, S.Petefi, Y.Fuchika.^[1]

He had been criticized by the Communist Party for the so-called "ideological errors".

Pervomayskyi died on 9 December 1973. He was buried in Kyiv at the Baikove Cemetery.^[2]

He was a recipient of a number of military and civil decorations.

• 1943 – Order of the Red Banner
• 1946 – Stalin Prize, 2nd class (for collections of poetry «День народження» ("The Birthday") and «Земля» ("The Land"))^[1]
• 1960 – Order of the Badge of Honour
• 1967 – Order of the Red Banner of Labour
• Order of the Patriotic War, 1st class

• Сайт письменника at Leonid Pervomajskij.net.
• Тексти Леоніда Первомайського та про нього
• К.: Головна редакція Української Радянської Енциклопедії (1981); Київ: За редакцією А. В. Кудрицкого; 736 с., іл.