Ivan Elagin (poet)

Ivan Elagin (December 1, 1918 – February 8, 1987; Ukrainian: Іван Єлагін, Russian: Иван Венедиктович Елагин, real name Ivan Matveyev,[1] was a Russian émigré poet born in Vladivostok.[2] He was the husband of poet Olga Anstei (Ukrainian: Ольга Анстей), best remembered for writing about the Holocaust.

For other poets with the same name, see Yelagin (surname).
Ivan Elagin after World War II

Life

Ivan Matveyev was born in Vladivostok in Siberia and studied medecine in Kiev in the 1930s. He was the first cousin of poet Novella Matveyeva. During World War II he remained in Kiev under the German occupation, and after the war served as a medic, and spent several years in displaced persons camps before immigrating to the United States.[3]

Elagin and his wife Olga left the Soviet Union to the West with the retreating German army in 1943. Their works were published side by side in the poetry anthology entitled Berega: Stikhi Poetov Vtoroi Emigratsii (Shores: Poetry of the Second Emigration) by Valentina Sinkevich, the first ever collection of works by the second wave of Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union.[2] They divorced in New York in 1950. Elagin became professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pittsburgh; a post held until his death from cancer in 1987.[4]

Professor Elagin was also affiliated with the Russian School at the Middlebury College Language Schools program. He was appointed as Visiting Poet-Lecturer in 1969 by Robert L. Baker, Dean and Director of the Russian Summer School.[5]

See also
  • Ivan Yelagin (1725–94), Russian statesman of the Catharinian era

References
  1. Maurice Friedberg (1997). Literary Translation in Russia: A Cultural History. Penn State Press. p. 155. ISBN 0271016000. Retrieved 7 September 2013.
  2. Maria Gorecki Nowak (Jul 1, 1999). "Book Reviews: Berega featuring Olga Anstei and Ivan Elagin". The American Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies for 1994. M.E. Sharpe. p. 469. ISBN 1563247518. Retrieved March 31, 2013.
  3. "Ivan Elagin, Pitt professor of Russian", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pittsburgh, 10 February 1987. Retrieved on 17 May 2013.
  4. ULS Archives (June 2009). "Ivan Elagin Papers". Summary Information. University of Pittsburgh Library System. Retrieved March 31, 2013.
  5. The Middlebury College Foreign Language Schools, 1915-1970: The story of a unique idea. 1975.
  • Kasica, Marianne; Leibowitz, Faye (June 2009). "Ivan Elagin Papers". University of Pittsburgh. Ivan Elagin papers and correspondences at the University of Pittsburgh
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