Mavr, Ianka

(pseudonym of Ivan Mikhailovich Fedorov). Born Apr. 29 (May 11), 1883, in Liepaja; died Aug. 3, 1971, in Minsk. Soviet Byelorussian author, Honored Artist of the Byelorussian SSR (1968). Member of the CPSU from 1950.

Mavr was the son of a worker. He was a teacher, and after the October Revolution of 1917 he worked in the Minsk schools. Mavr was one of the founders of Soviet Byelorussian children’s literature. In 1925 he published his science fiction novella Mankind Goes On. His main works are In the Land of the Bird of Paradise (1926), Son of the Water (1928), Robinsons of the Poles’e (1932), and TVT(1934); the novel Amok (1929); and the autobiographical novella Path out of Darkness (1948). Mavr was awarded three orders, as well as medals.