Yanka Mavr

Yanka Mavr (Belarusian: Я́нка Маўр, real name — Ivan Mikhailovich Fyodorov, Belarusian: Іван Міхайлавіч Фёдараў) (1883—1971) was a Belarusian Soviet writer. Honored Worker of Culture of the BSSR (1968). Member of the CPSU(b) since 1950. Member of the Union of Writers of the USSR (1934). He was born on April 29 (May 10), 1883, in the city of Libava (now Liepāja, Latvia) into a carpenter’s family. He studied at the Panevėžys Teachers’ Seminary. From 1911 he worked in schools in Minsk as a teacher of geography and history; after the October Revolution, he worked in the People’s Commissariat of Education of the BSSR and at the Belarusian State Publishing House. From 1930 he devoted himself to creative work. Yanka Mavr’s son was Fyodor Ivanovich Fyodorov, an academician of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. Yanka Mavr’s daughter was married to the son of Y. Kolas. Yanka Mavr died on August 3, 1971. He was buried in Minsk at the Eastern Cemetery. Creative activity He made his debut in 1923 as a feuilletonist in the newspaper Sovetskaya Belorussiya and the Leningrad magazine Begemot. In 1926, he published his first novella in Belarusian in the magazine Belarusian Pioneer. He was the author of books for children, plays, and translations. He translated individual works by H. C. Andersen, D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak, M. Prishvin, A. Chekhov, R. Kipling, M. Twain, J. Verne, V. Hugo, A. Gaidar, V. Shklovsky, and A. Kononov into Belarusian.