Gnat Martynovich Khotkevich

(pen name Gnat Galaida). Born Dec. 19 (31), 1877, in Kharkov; died Oct. 8, 1938. Soviet Ukrainian writer.

Khotkevich graduated from the Kharkov Technological Institute in 1900. His interest in modernism was reflected in the collection Poems in Prose (1902) and in various other works. The revolution of 1905–07 decisively influenced Khotkevich’s social, political, and aesthetic views; the play Hard Times (published 1906) and such essays on dramas as “They” and “On the Railroad” (published 1909–10) glorify the revolutionary struggle. Khotkevich was subjected to repressive measures by the Tsarist government. His most famous works are the novella The Stone Spirit (1911), the cycle Mountain Aquarelles (1914), and the plays Dovbush (1909), The Year of the Hutzuls (1910), A Not-So-Simple Thing (1911), and The Experienced Soldier (1911).

A number of articles written by Khotkevich after the Great October Revolution show that he failed to grasp the significance of the Bolsheviks’ struggle against nationalism. In the 1920’s he wrote the novella Dovbush (published, 1965), the dramas Of Igor’s Campaign (1926) and A Village in 1905 (1929), and the tetralogy Bogdan Khmel’nitskii (1929), which contains nationalist errors. In this period Khotkevich also produced scholarly works on music and theater and translated plays by Shakespeare, Molière, Schiller, Hugo, and Kalidasa.