Novichenko, Leonid

Born Mar. 18 (31), 1914, in the village of Rusanovka, present-day Lipovaia Dolina Raion, Sumy Oblast. Soviet literary scholar and critic. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1958). Member of the CPSU since 1944.

Novichenko graduated from the department of philology of the University of Kiev in 1939. His first works were published in 1938. He has written works on socialist realism and the history of Ukrainian literature, as well as studies on the interrelation of the literatures of the peoples of the USSR, including books about T. G. Shevchenko, M. F. Ryl’skii, P. G. Tychina, and M. Irchan.

Novichenko is one of the authors and editors of the History of Ukrainian Literature (vols. 1–8, 1967–71). For his book on Tychina (Poetry and Revolution [1956; Russian translation, 1957]), Novichenko was awarded the V. G. Belinskii Prize of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. For his Not an Illustration—A Discovery! (1967; Russian translation, 1969) he received the T. G. Shevchenko State Prize of the Ukrainian SSR (1968). Novichenko has been secretary of the Writers’ Union of the USSR since 1959. He has been awarded five orders and a number of medals.