Boichenko, Aleksandr

Born Nov. 9 (22), 1903, in Kiev; died there May 30,1950. Soviet Ukrainian writer and public figure. Member of the CPSU from 1923. Born into a railroad worker’s family.

Boichenko wrote in both Ukrainian and Russian. From 1929 to 1932 he was first secretary of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Leninist Komsomol. He was elected to membership in the bureau of the Central Committee of the Leninist Young Communist League of the USSR, the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, and the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee. From 1933 a serious illness confined Boichenko to his bed, but, displaying great courage, he devoted himself to literary work. He was the author of a trilogy of novellas, Youth (books one and two, 1945–48; book three, uncompleted). In this work he describes the life of the Ukrainian Komsomol during the 1920’s, the struggle against the economic devastation after the Civil War, and the conflict with Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism and with Trotskyism. He painted a gallery of living images of Komsomol members.