Vitalii Fridrikhovich Volskii

(pseudonym of Zeidel’). Born Aug. 23 (Sept. 5), 1901, in St. Petersburg. Soviet Byelorussian writer and literary scholar. Member of the CPSU since 1925.

Vol’skii took part in the Civil War, and during the years 1920-26 he served in the Red Army. He began publishing his work in 1926. His plays The Miraculous Pipe (1938),Grang-dad and the Crane (1939), Nesterka (1940; film with the same title, 1955), and Masheka (1946), based on motifs of Byelo-russian national folklore, poeticize heroic folk characters. Vol’skii is also the author of books of sketches and short stories about Byelorussian nature: Through Forest Paths (1948), In the Forests on the Bereza River (1955), Month After Month (1956), Sea Gulls Over the Naroch’ River (1959), Native Land (1961), Three Journeys to the Land of the Byelorussians (1967), Poles’e (1970); also books of impressions gained while traveling abroad: African Journey (1963) and El Maghreb (1965). He wrote An Outline History of Byelorussian Literature During the Epoch of Feudalism (1958) and translated Goethe’s Reynard the Fox into Byelorussian. Vol’skii was awarded two orders and medals.