Isbakh, Alexander Abramovich
ISBAKH, ALEXANDER ABRAMOVICH
ISBAKH, ALEXANDER ABRAMOVICH (Itzhak Bakhrakh ; 1904–1977), Russian writer and literary scholar. Isbakh was born in Daugavpils, Latvia, and graduated from the Literary Department of Moscow University in 1924. He published poems and novels about the Red Army, including descriptions of Jewish soldiers. During World War ii he was an army correspondent. He was also a member of the editorial staff of the journals Oktober and Znamia, and taught in the university. In 1949 he was arrested as a "cosmopolitan" and sentenced to 10 years in forced labor camps. He was released in 1959, rehabilitated, and returned to writing. He published a number of autobiographical novels and a book about the French Resistance (1960), always using Jewish imagery and themes. He also published a personal account of the Nazi offensive, Front (1941). His literary studies include one on Louis Aragon (1957) and Na literatunykh barrikadakh ("On the Barricades of Literature," 1964). He later wrote the fictional family chronicle Masterovoy ("The Artisan," 1966).
[Shmuel Spector (2nd ed.)]