Utkin, Iosif

Utkin, Iosif Pavlovich 

Born May 15 (28), 1903, in the village of Khingan (present-day Mikoianovsk, Khabarovsk Krai); died Nov. 13, 1944. Soviet Russian poet.

Utkin served in the Civil War and the Great Patriotic War. His works were first published in 1922. Utkin won fame with the narrative poem The Tale of Motele the Redhead (1925), which deals with the changes introduced by the October Revolution in a small Jewish town. He was the author of the narrative poem My Beloved Childhood (1933) and of the collections A First Book of Poems (1927), Publicist Lyrics (1931), Verses (1935), and Lyrics (1939).

The combination of revolutionary fervor and tender lyricism made Utkin’s poetry popular, especially among the youth of the 1920’s and 1930’s. His published collections of lyric poetry include Verses From the Front (1942) and On the Motherland, Friendship, and Love (1944).

Utkin perished in an airplane crash while returning from the front.

WORKS

Stikhotvoreniia i poemy. Moscow-Leningrad, 1966.

REFERENCES

Lunacharskii, A. V., Sobr. soch., vol. 2. Moscow, 1964. Pages 317–19,327–29,348–53.
Saakiants, A. losif Utkin: Ocherk zhizni i tvorchestva. Moscow, 1969.
V nogu s trevozhnym vekom: Vospominaniia ob losife Utkine. Moscow, 1971.