Blakitnyi-Ellan

(pseudonym of Vasilii Mikhailovich Ellanskii). Born Jan. 12, 1894, in the village of Kozly, Chernigov Province; died Dec. 4, 1925, in Kharkov. Soviet Ukrainian writer and public figure. Born into the family of a priest. Studied at Kiev Commercial Institute.

Blakitnyi-Ellan was a member of the Ukrainian Socialist Revolutionary Party from 1917 and the leader of its left wing, which took shape as the Party of Borot’bysts in 1918. During this period (1917–20) he committed serious errors, nationalistic in nature, in his political and literary work. After the party dissolved itself in 1920, he joined the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of the Ukraine. He was involved in political work in the Red Army and participated in battles against the White Poles. He was chosen a member of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR and also of the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee. He was one of the leaders of the proletarian literary movement in the Ukraine, organizing Gart, an association of proletarian writers. He was first published in 1918. His book of poems Beats of the Hammer and the Heart (1920) was filled with enthusiasm over the struggle for the triumph of the proletarian revolution. His poems were characterized by an impetuous energetic rhythm. He emerged as a theoretician of proletarian literature (New Writer—New Literature, 1924, and others) and an active fighter against bourgeois nationalism and national betrayal. Under the pseudonym Valer Pronoza he published collections of topical satire in verse: Penciled Notes (1924), Soviet Mustard (1924), and Governmental Mind (1925). He was posthumously awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.