Pestrak, Filipp Semenovich

Born Nov. 14 (27), 1903, in the village of Sakovtsy, in what is now Ivatsevichi Raion, Brest Oblast. Soviet Byelorussian writer. Member of the CPSU since 1926.

A participant in the revolutionary liberation movement in former Western Byelorussia, Pestrak spent 11 years in the prisons of bourgeois Poland. During the Great Patriotic War (1941— 45) he was in the partisan movement. His first verse collection was On Guard (1940). His poetry collection For Our Fatherland (1946) was devoted to the struggle of Byelorussian partisans against the German invaders. Later he published short-story collections, including The First Sprouts (1951) and Forest Song (1958). Pestrak’s best work is the historical and revolutionary novel We’ll Meet at the Barricades (vote. 1-2, 1948-52; separate edition 1954; Russian translation 1955). In 1963 he published the novel Sredibor’e, awarded the la. Kolas Literary Prize of the Byelorussian SSR, about life in the postwar Byelorussian countryside. Pestrak’s works have been translated into the languages of the peoples of the USSR. He has been awarded five orders and a number of medals.