Beletskii, Aleksandr Ivanovich

Born Oct. 21 (Nov. 2), 1884, in Kazan; died Aug. 2,1961, in Kiev. Soviet Russian and Ukrainian literary scholar; academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1958) and of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1939).

Beletskii’s main works were in the history of Russian literature (A. S. Pushkin, N. V. Gogol, M. Iu. Lermontov, F. M. Dostoevsky, L. M. Leonov, and others), Western European literature (The Faust Legend in Relation to the History of Demonology, 1911–12), and ancient literature; he also did work in literary theory (“In the Workshop of the Verbal Artist,” in the book Questions of the Theory and Psychology of the Creative Act, vol. 8,1923). He is the author of works on Ukrainian writers and of the article “Forty Years of Ukrainian Literary Scholarship (1917–57),” published in 1957. He was editor in chief of History of Ukrainian Literature (2 vols., 1954–57). He has studied the relations between Russian, Ukrainian, and other Slavic literatures. He was awarded five orders and several medals.