Tishka Gartnyi

(pseudonym of Dmitrii Fedorovich Zhilunovich). Born Oct. 23 (Nov. 4), 1887; died Apr. 11, 1937. Soviet Byelorussian author and public figure. Member of the Academy of Sciences of the Byelorussian SSR (1928). Member of the CPSU from 1918.

Born in the hamlet of Kopyl’, in present-day Minsk Oblast, Gartnyi moved to St. Petersburg in 1912. He contributed to Pravda and edited the Byelorussian newspaper Dziannitsa. In 1919 he became chairman of the first Soviet government of Byelorussia. As a poet, prose writer, playwright, publicist, and critic, Gartnyi associated himself with the revolutionary democratic trend of Byelorussian literature of the pre-revolutionary period. The worker as an image and peasant themes rank high in his lyrics; particularly in the collection Songs (1913). In the collections Songs of Labor and Struggle (1922) and Triumph (1925), Gartnyi glorified the achievements of the October Revolution and the labor of the Soviet people. His most important work is the novel Juices of the Virgin Soil (1914-29), which depicts the formation of revolutionary consciousness in Byelorussia. The collections Sticks on the Waves (1924) and Alleys (1927) show the heroism of the Civil War and create positive images of communists. Gartnyi also wrote plays and a novel on the collectivization period, Peregudy (1935).