Larisa Reisner

Born May 1(13), 1895, in Lublin, now in Poland; died Feb. 9, 1926, in Moscow. Soviet Russian writer. Member of the CPSU from 1918.

With her father, a law professor, Reisner published the journal Rudin (1915–16), to which she contributed criticism and commentaries on current affairs. From 1918 to 1920 she was a soldier, intelligence officer, and political worker on the Eastern Front and in the Volga Military Flotilla. She published a series of essays drawn from her observations and experiences (The Front, 1924). Her travels abroad were the subject of the books Afghanistan and Hamburg at the Barricades (both 1925). In Coal, Iron, and Living People (1925), which marked the path for the development of the Soviet essay, sketches of the way of life and customs of the Urals backwoods and the Donbas settlements are combined with business-like observations on economic matters. In writing of the workers, she reminds the reader that their enthusiasm cannot make up for carelessness on the part of the economic planners. Characteristic of the prose of her essays are the unity of analytical thought and poetic feeling and the energy and imagery of the language.

Reisner died of typhus.