Mikhail

Boris I

 orig. Mikhail

(died May 2, 907, Preslave, Bulg.) Khan of Bulgaria (852–89). He resolved to use Christianity to unite his ethnically divided country, and an unsuccessful war with the Byzantines led to his baptism in the Orthodox faith (864). Boris's attempt to enforce mass baptism set off a pagan rebellion, which he quelled, and he helped establish the Bulgarian church. He sponsored missionaries to foster Slavic learning and the use of the Old Church Slavic language. He abdicated in 889 to become a monk but returned to drive his reactionary son Vladimir from the throne. After installing another son, Simeon I, as khan, Boris went back to his monastery. He was later made an Orthodox saint.

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Mashara, Mikhas’ (Mikhail) Antonovich 

Born Nov. 5 (18), 1902, in the village of Toboly, present-day Vitebsk Oblast. Soviet Byelorussian writer. Member of the CPSU since 1943.

Mashara was the son of a poor peasant. He is the author of the poetry collections Sketches (1928), Toward Sunny Shores (1934), Eve of Spring (1935), From Under Thatched Roofs (1937), To Byelorussia (1944), Through Storms (1948), and My Lake Country (1962) and the poems The Death of Kastus’ Kalinovskii (1934) and Mom’s Hill (1936). Mashara has written the novels The Kresy Are Fighting (1966), The Sun Behind the Bars (1968), and Lukishki (1970), about the struggle of the workers of West Byelorussia for their rights. He is also known as a translator. Mashara was awarded two orders and various medals.

WORKS

Ad rodnykh aselits. Minsk, 1959.
Vershy. Minsk, 1971.

REFERENCES

Klimkovich, M. “Mikhas’ Mashara.” In his book Litaraturna-krytychnyia artykuly, Minsk, 1962.
Pis’menniki Savetskai Belarusi: Karotki biiabibliiahrafichny davednik. Minsk, 1970.