Arkhip Teslenko

Born Feb. 18 (Mar. 2), 1882, in the village of Khar’kovtsy, in what is now Lokhvitsa Raion, Poltava Oblast; died there June 15 (28), 1911. Ukrainian writer.

Teslenko worked as a farmhand and as a clerk. In 1906 he was exiled to Viatka Province for his participation in the revolutionary events of 1905. He returned home in 1908, seriously ill.

Teslenko’s first published works, some verse and ethnographic sketches from daily life, were written in Russian and appeared in 1902. From 1906, Teslenko’s short stories of peasant life protesting poverty, injustice, and exploitation appeared in Ukrainian periodicals. Teslenko was a prominent representative of critical realism in Ukrainian literature. In his best works, he exposed the autocracy and the Black Hundreds, depicted the awakening of revolutionary consciousness in the peasantry, and drew portraits of revolutionaries in the countryside. Most of his stories are written in the first person and have marked satirical elements. Teslenko’s works have been translated into many of the languages of the peoples of the USSR.