Pimen Emelianovich Panchenko

Born Aug. 10 (23), 1917, in Tallinn. Soviet Byelorussian poet; People’s Poet of the Byelorussian SSR (1973). Member of the CPSU since 1943.

Panchenko, who began publishing in 1934, graduated from the Minsk Teachers’ Institute in 1939. His first collections of poetry were Firm Assurance (1938) and September Banners (1940). Panchenko served in the Great Patriotic War (1941—45); his poems of the war years were collected in The Road of War (1942) and Distant Stations (1945). Later collections were The Oath (1949), The Wide World (1955), The Book of Journeys and Love (1959), New York Sketches (1960), A Thousand Skies (1962), By Lightning’s Flash (1966; awarded the Ia. Kupala State Prize of the Byelorussian SSR in 1967), and December (1972).

Panchenko’s poetry combines lyricism with a journalistic approach, enthusiasm with irony, and intense topicality with moral concern. His poems have been translated into many languages of the USSR and into foreign languages. He was a deputy to the fifth, sixth, and eighth convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the Byelorussian SSR. Panchenko is a member of the administrative board of the Writers’ Union of the USSR. He has received four orders and several medals.