Ivan Iulianovich Kulik

Kulik, Ivan Iulianovich 

(pseudonyms, R. Rolinato and Vasil’ Rolenko). Born Jan. 14 (26), 1897; died Oct. 14, 1941. Soviet Ukrainian writer. Member of the CPSU from 1914.

Kulik was born in Shpola and studied at the Odessa Art School. In 1914 he emigrated to the USA, where he worked in factories and mines and published poems and articles in the Russian-language socialist press. In 1917, Kulik returned to the Ukraine, and after the October Revolution he was engaged in Party and soviet work. He took part in the Civil War (1918-20), and between 1924 and 1926 he was the Soviet consul in Canada.

Kulik was one of the organizers of literary life in the Ukraine, becoming the first chairman of the Union of Ukrainian Writers in 1934. From 1935 to 1937 he served as the director of the Ukrainian Politizdat (Political Publishing House). His first book of poems, My Kolomyiki, was published in 1921. Subsequently, he published the collections A Green Heart (1923), Encircled (1927), and Youth Matured (1935).

Kulik’s poetry is civic and internationalist. An important theme is the depiction of capitalist reality in America. The narrative poem A Black Epic (1929) deals with the struggle of American Negroes for civil rights. Kulik also wrote a book of short stories entitled A Consul’s Notes (1932) and was a publicist, critic, and translator. At the Thirteenth Congress of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of the Ukraine he was elected a member of the Central Committee.

WORKS

Virshi ta poemy: Vybrane. [With an introduction by S. Kryzhanivs’kyi.] Kiev, 1962.
Poezii. [With an introduction by L. Pervomais’kyi.] Kiev, 1967.
In Russian translation:
Stikhotvoreniia. Ballady. Poemy. [With an introduction by I. Postupal’-skii.] Moscow, 1959.
Zapiski konsula. Moscow, 1964.

S. A. KRYZHANOVSKII