Boris Slutsky

Russian-language Jewish poet Boris Slutsky was born in Slovyansk and grew up in Kharkov, Ukraine. He studied law and literature before dedicating himself to poetry. Although he began writing in the 1930s, Slutsky’s first volume of poetry was not published until 1957, after Stalin’s death. A leading poet and a member of the Communist Party who was nonetheless critical of the regime, Slutsky circulated his poems only in the samizdat press. Many of his poems on Jewish themes were not published until after his death.