Oleksa Desniak

(pseudonym of Aleksei Ignatovich Rudenko). Born Mar. 4 (17), 1909, in the village of Bondarovka, present-day Sosnitsa Raion, Chernigov Oblast; died May 25, 1942, near the village of Pavlovka Vtoraia, Kharkov Oblast. Soviet Ukrainian writer. Member of the CPSU from 1939.

Born into a peasant family, Desniak graduated from the Chernigov Institute for Social Upbringing in 1931. His works were first published in 1928. After the liberation of the Western Ukraine in 1939, he was the head of the Lvov Organization of the Writers’ Union of the Ukraine.

Desniak wrote novels, novellas, sketches, and stories. The novel The Battalions Crossed the Desna (1937) is one of the best works on the Civil War in the Ukraine. In the novel Udai River (1938), Desniak portrays the life of Ukrainian kolkhoz peasants and the atmosphere of creative labor during the prewar five-year plans. The story Turgai Falcon (1940) is devoted to Amangel’dy Imanov, a hero of the Kazakh people. Desniak died in battle during the Great Patriotic War (1941–45).