Bolshevik who returned on the sealed train, and critic of the Literaturny kritik circle around Lifshitz and Lukács
Born in Yakutsk to the exiled Polish revolutionary Feliks Kon, she joined the Bolsheviks in 1915 and in 1917 returned from exile with her first husband, Grigory Usievich, on the sealed train of Lenin's party. After work in the Cheka and the Crimean censorship, she graduated from the Institute of Red Professors in 1932 and became deputy director of the Institute of Literature and Art of the Communist Academy. That year she attacked RAPP, and in 1933 branded the poet Zabolotsky a class enemy. A member of the current around Lifshitz and Lukács, she edited Literaturny kritik, and in On Political Poetry (1937) argued that poetry must carry the full range of sincere feeling rather than translate political platforms into verse.
Also known as: Elena Usievich · Yelena Kon
Activities and affiliations
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1915–
Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks
Scholarship and theory -
1925–1928
Soviet Union state institutionsPlenipotentiary of Krymlit, the Crimean publishing censorship
Ideology and propaganda -
1932–
Soviet Union state institutionsDeputy director of the Institute of Literature and Art, Communist AcademyMain
Scholarship and theory
Career Timeline
- 1909Joined the revolutionary movement
- 1915Joined the Bolsheviks
- 1917Returned from Swiss exile on the sealed train
- 1925–1928Plenipotentiary of the Crimean publishing censorship
- 1932Graduated from the Institute of Red Professors; For the Purity of Leninism in Literary Theory
- 1933Article attacking Zabolotsky
- 1937On Political Poetry
- 1950Vladimir Mayakovsky