Niedre, Ianis

Born May 24, 1909, in Tikhvin, in what is now Leningrad Oblast. Soviet Latvian writer and literary scholar. Honored Cultural Worker of the Latvian SSR (1959). Member of the CPSU since 1934.

Niedre was first published in 1927. From 1931 to 1933 he studied at the Riga Commercial Institute. Imprisoned during the fascist regime, he wrote a book of short stories, In Five Cellblocks (1941), about his experience. The trilogy The Village of Pushkany (vols. 1–3, 1941–61) depicts the revolutionary struggle in pre-Soviet Latgale.

In 1959, Niedre published the novel Spring Floods (Russian translation, 1960), and in 1966 the novel A Burdock Grows Outside My Window. The novels To Each His Happiness (1968; Russian translation, 1970) and An Island in the Raging Sea (1970; Russian translation, 1972) are dedicated to the life of the Latvian revolutionary P. I. Stuchka (Stučkas). Niedre is also the author of the works Latvian Folklore (1948) and Latvian Literature (vols. 1–2, 1952–53). From 1941 to 1957 he was first secretary of the administrative board of the Writers’ Union of Latvia. He was a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Latvian SSR from 1940 to 1947. He has been awarded two orders, as well as medals.