Shmuel Godiner

A native of Belarus, Yiddish writer Shmuel Godiner spent much of his early literary career in Warsaw, under the tutelage of I. L. Peretz and other leading cultural figures. Godiner supported the Bolshevik Revolution and was associated with the Moscow journal Der shtrom. He shifted stylistically from his earlier symbolist work toward the so-called proletarian aesthetic of early Soviet literature. Godiner’s novels and short stories, on themes such as the Russian Civil War, the Sovietization of Jews, collectivization, and the purges, were well received and widely translated into Russian before and after World War II. Godiner volunteered for the Red Army during the war and was killed at the front.