Venclova, Antanas

Born Jan. 7, 1906, in the village of Trempiniai, in present-day Kapsukas Raion. Soviet Lithuanian writer and public figure. People’s Writer of the Lithuanian SSR (1965). Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Lithuanian SSR (1949). Member of the CPSU since 1950.

Venclova was elected a member of the Central Committee at the Seventh through Tenth congresses of the Communist Party of Lithuania and was people’s commissar of education of the Lithuanian SSR from 1940 to 1943. He is the author of the national anthem of the Lithuanian SSR. He graduated from the humanities department at the University of Kaunas in 1932 and worked as a teacher.

Venclova’s literary activity began in 1925. In 1930 and 1931 he edited the literary journal Trečas frontas (Third Front). Friendship (1936), his novel based on student life, and the collection of stories Night (1939) advanced his work into the first ranks of Lithuanian progressive antifascist literature. During the Great Patriotic War he published the collections of patriotic poems Call of the Homeland (1943) and Where the Apple Tree Grows Tall (1945). He was awarded the State Prize of the USSR in 1952 for his collection Selected Poems (1951). In 1959 he published a novel about the fate of the intelligentsia during the period of the reestablishment of Soviet power in Lithuania (Birthday, State Prize of the Lithuanian SSR, 1960). In 1964, 1966, and 1969, he published the autobiographical works Springtime River, In Search of Youth, and Storm at Noon (1969). He is the author of pieces of literary criticism, war sketches, and travel essays. He translated into Lithuanian Eugene Onegin and other works by A. S. Pushkin, as well as works by M. Gorky and poems by N. Tikhonov, P. Tychina, and others. Many of Venclova’s books have been translated into Russian and other languages spoken in the USSR. He was a deputy to the first through fifth convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. He has been awarded the Order of Lenin, three other orders, and medals.