Levarsa Bidovich Kvitsinia

Born Dec. 31, 1912, in the village of Atara, in present-day Ochamchira Raion, Abkhazian ASSR; died 1941. Soviet Abkhazian poet. Member of the CPSU from 1932. Son of a peasant.

Kvitsinia graduated from the M. Gorky Institute of Literature in 1937. His works were first published in 1928. In 1932 he published the collection The Country is Growing, which includes the narrative poems Tkvarchelstroi, Lenin, Millions of Voices, and Komsomol. Kvitsinia is also the author of such narrative poems as Sharizan (1933) and Daur (1936). The character Sharizan personifies the qualities of the new Abkhazian woman who, through a bitter struggle, is overcoming the “age-old laws of the mountains.” Kvitsinia’s lyric poetry is imbued with love for the Communist Party, the Soviet people, and the new Abkhazia. He participated in the Great Patriotic War and was killed near Bialystok.