Berce, Vizbulis Augusts

Born Oct. 28, 1916, in Irkutsk; died Feb. 26, 1971, in Riga. Soviet Latvian writer. Member of the CPSU from 1947. Son of A. Arajs-Berce, a revolutionary and writer.

Berce graduated from the Moscow Institute of Law in 1940. He fought in the Great Patriotic War. His first books were The Strength of the Strong (1948), which contains short stories written during the war years, and The First Eleven (1949), which is a novella about the first steps toward the collectivization of agriculture in Latvia. The main themes of Berce’s subsequent works are the life and labor of the Soviet working man and the problems faced by young people. These themes appear in the novels The Future Begins Today (1951), We All Came from the People (1956), and Legacy (1965) and the novella Erika, Dzidra, and the Others (1966). After a trip through the Far East he wrote the non-fiction work An Editorial Office on Wheels (1961). The books Bright-colored Dreams (1963) and Following the Blue Bird (1968) are reflections on the work of a writer. All of Berce’s books have been translated into Russian. He was awarded the Order of the Badge of Honor.