Smirnenski, Khristo

(pen name of Khristo Dimitrov Iz-mirliev). Born Sept. 17 (29), 1898, in Kukush; died June 18, 1923, in Sofia. Bulgarian poet. Member of the Bulgarian Communist Party (Narrow Socialists) from 1921.

Smirnenski studied at technical and military schools. He began publishing in 1915, contributing to humorous magazines and communist publications. Smirnenski helped found socialist realism in Bulgarian literature and was the first to create significant portrayals of proletarian revolutionaries; he glorified the coming world revolution in the poetry collection Let There Be Day! (1922). His verses and narrative poems of the 1920’s were permeated with sympathy for the fate of the poor and hostility toward oppressors. These works, which included poetry devoted to the Great October Socialist Revolution and to the Civil War in Russia, were collected in Red Squadrons (1920), Moscow (1921), and In the Volga Region (1922). Smirnenski was also a talented satirist, as seen in Pro Patria (1919), Kronstadt (1921), and A Political Winter (1921).