Illés, Béla

Born Mar. 22, 1895, in Kassa (present-day Ko-sice). Hungarian writer; member of the Communist Party since 1919. Graduated from the department of law of the University of Budapest.

Illies was drafted into the army in 1916, and he took part in the Hungarian proletarian revolution of 1919. After its defeat he emigrated. In 1920 he engaged in underground work in the Transcarpathian Ukraine. In 1921 he moved to Austria, and from 1923 to 1945 he lived in the USSR. From 1925 to 1933 he was secretary of the International Association of Revolutionary Writers.

Illes described his impressions of the war years in the novel Notes of Doctor Pal Utrius (1917). The novel The Tisza Burns (Russian translation 1929–33; published in Hungarian in 1957) re-creates the struggle of the Hungarian working people for the Soviet republic in 1919, and the trilogy Carpathian Rhapsody (Russian translation, 1941; published in Hungarian in 1945) is devoted to the life and revolutionary struggle of the working people in Transcarpathia. The novel The Homeland Found (books 1–3, 1952–54; Russian translation, 1959) deals with the events of World War II (1939–45) and the liberation of Hungary. Illes was awarded the Kossuth Prize in 1950 and 1955.