Istrati, Panait

(pseudonym of Gerasim Istrati). Born Aug. 11, 1884, at Braila; died Apr. 16, 1935, in Bucharest. Rumanian writer.

Istrati wrote in French. R. Rolland’s favorable assessment contributed to the success of his books, which sympathetically portrayed the unfortunate and undoubtedly bore the stamp of a gifted writer. He regarded freedom from a petit bourgeois point of view which prevented him from grasping the new relationship between man and society in Soviet Russia. His book on the Soviet Union, Toward Another Flame (vols. 1–3, 1929), gave a distorted view of Soviet life and caused all true friends of the USSR to turn their backs on him.