Vinchevsky, Morris

(pseudonym of Benzion Nova-khovich). Born Aug. 9 (21), 1856, in Ianov, Kaunas Province, in the present-day Lithuanian SSR; died Mar. 18, 1932, in New York. Jewish proletarian poet.

Vinchevsky joined the German Social Democratic Party in 1876 and organized the first Yiddish socialist paper, Dos poylishe yidl in London in 1884. He moved to New York in 1894 and took part in the publication of the Social-Democratic paper Forverts (Jewish Daily Forward). In 1921 he joined the Communist Party, USA. His first verses, tales, and articles were imbued with socialist ideas. In 1879 he published a series of Yiddish articles against the Haskalah, the Jewish movement of enlightenment. Two volumes of his satiric journalistic prose, The Crazy Philosopher in England, and a volume including the plays The Last Recruitment and The Fake Wedding appeared in 1920. He visited the USSR in 1924, where in the same year a collection of his verses, Battle Songs, was published.