Kondrat Krapiva

(pseudonym of Kondrat Kondrat’evich Atrakhovich). Born Feb. 22 (Mar. 5), 1896, in the village of Nizok, present-day Uzda Raion, Minsk Oblast. Soviet Byelorussian writer. People’s Writer of the Byelorussian SSR (1956); academician (1950) and vice-president (since 1956) of the Academy of Sciences of the Byelorussian SSR. Member of the CPSU since 1941. Came from a peasant family.

Krapiva was recruited into the tsarist army in 1915. He joined the Red Army in 1920 and served until 1923. He took part in the campaign for the liberation of western Byelorussia in 1939 and in battles against the White Finns; he also served in the Great Patriotic War (1941–45). He graduated from the pedagogical department of the V. I. Lenin Byelorussian University in 1930. He began his literary career in 1922.

Krapiva’s work played an important role in the development of satirical genres in Soviet Byelorussian literature. He is the author of numerous fables, poems, narrative poems, and short stories (the collections The Nettle, 1925; Fables, 1927; Neighbors, 1928; and Live Phenomena, 1930), as well as a novel (The Medvedichi, book 1, 1932). He has been a prolific playwright. He is the author of the heroic drama The Partisans (1937), the comedy He Who Laughs Last (1939; State Prize of the USSR, 1941), and the plays With the People (1948) and People and Devils (1958). His comedies The Larks Are Singing (1950; State Prize of the USSR, 1951) and An Interested Party (1953) were devoted to postwar reconstruction. Krapiva’s works are timely in their subject matter, have suspenseful plots, and are filled with lively folk humor.

Krapiva is also well known as a translator of Russian and foreign classics. His books and plays have been translated into many foreign languages and the languages of the USSR. He was a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the Byelorussian SSR of the second through eighth convocations. He was awarded the State Prize of the USSR in 1971 for his participation in work on Byelorussian linguistic geography. He has been awarded three Orders of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution, and three other orders, as well as medals.