Aron Scheftelewitsch Gurstein

Aron Scheftelewitsch Gurstein ( Russian Арон Шефтелевич Гурштейн ; born September 20 ^{. Jul} / 2. October  1895 ^greg. In Krolevets , † 1941 ) was a Russian / Soviet writer , literary scholar and literary critic , the Yiddish wrote.

Life

Gurstein's parents were the employee of a shipping company Scheftel Moissejewitsch Gurstein and the journalist Jelena Wassiljewna nee Resnikowa (1907-1992). During Gurstein's youth, the family moved frequently due to work, so that Gurstein grew up in Nikopol , Kachowka , Jelisawetgrad , Grodno and Proskurow . At the age of sixteen he published his first poem in a newspaper. Short stories and other poems followed, and in 1913 he published his first Yiddish poem. He graduated from high school in Vilna in 1913 . In 1916 he began studying at the Oriental Studies - Faculty of the University of Petrograd . There he studied Hebrew literature .

During the October Revolution Gurstein was in Nikopol, whereupon he gave up his studies. When the Soviet power established itself in Nikopol, he became enthusiastic about cultural-political and organizational work. He came forward with lectures and worked in the local newspapers and popular education bodies. In May 1920, he joined the Red Army as a volunteer . Because of severe myopia , he was released from military service and sent to the brigade staff and then to the staff of the 6th Army, where he wrote the papers of a volunteer for the army press.

When he was demobilized in June 1921 , he continued his education in Moscow . At the new Institute of Oriental Studies, which had been formed from the Lazarev Institute and other Moscow educational institutions for Oriental Studies, he studied in the Arab department. At the same time he worked in the People's Commissariat for Nationality Issues . In addition his writing developed. In 1924 he began collecting material for a Jewish literary history . In 1924, Gurstein's great work on Jizchok Leib Perez appeared in an edition of the Minsk Institute for Belarusian Culture . In 1925 he published an essay on the important Jewish satirist Izchak Ioel Linezki (1839-1915) of the 19th century. During this time of the New Economic Politics (NEP) he assessed art more aesthetically than class-political , as his Yiddish pamphlet Wegn our criticism showed. After graduating in the autumn of 1926, he was accepted into the traineeship of the Institute for Language and Literature at the Russian Association of Research Institutes for Social Sciences (RANION). He specialized in the history of literature in the 19th century and worked at RANION on theoretical problems in literary studies . After three years and before the dissolution of RANION, he completed his apprenticeship. He was then a lecturer in Jewish literature at the 2nd Moscow University, which in 1918 Anatoly Wassiljewitsch Lunacharsky had trained from Vladimir Ivanovich Guerrier's advanced courses for women .

In 1931 Gurstein became professor for Jewish literary history at the Pedagogical Institute in Kiev and at the Pedagogical Institute in Odessa . He published the Yiddish works of Mendele Moicher Sforim and created the bibliography of the works of Jizchok Leib Perez. Gurstein wrote about problems of 19th century Jewish literature and about the works of Scholem Alejchems , David Bergelsons , Der Nisters , Shmuel Halkins and others. In the Yiddish anthology Problemes funkritik in 1933 Gurstein considered socialist realism to be the only admissible method in literature. In 1934 he became a member of the new Union of Writers of the USSR .

1935/36 Gurstein worked in the department of criticism and bibliography of Pravda and wrote articles on modern literature and new books of Soviet writers, including Vsevolod Ivanov , Valentin Kataev , Mikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko ( The Sky Blue Book книга (Голубая, 1935)), Vasily Semjonowitsch Grossman , W. Avdejew, Wladimir Wladimirowitsch Mayakowski and Maxim Gorki . Gurstein was the only Soviet literary scholar to help the Jewish philologist Salman Reisen with the work on the four-volume lexicon of Jewish literature. Gurstein's articles on Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov , Vladimir Mikhailovich Shulyatikov , the works of Russian and Jewish classics, Soviet writers, and literary theory and history were included in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia and other reference works.

After the start of the German-Soviet war came Gurstein immediately with many other writers in the Volksopoltschenije and began the march to the on 6 July 1941 Front together with Sulfar Chismatullin . In the autumn of 1941 Gurstein died outside Moscow .

Gurstein's son is the astronomer Alexander Aronowitsch Gurstein .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} В. В. Жданов: Гурштейн и его критические работы . In: А. Гурштейн. Избранные статьи . Советский писатель, Moscow 1959, p. 215-247 ( lib.ru [accessed January 27, 2019]).
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} The International Institute for Holocaust Research: Aaron Gurshtein (accessed January 27, 2019).
3. ↑ The YIVD Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe: Gurshteyn, Aron (accessed January 27, 2019).
4. ↑ Elektronnaja evreiskaja enziklopedija: Линецкий Ицхак Иоэль (accessed on January 26, 2019).