Tepper, Kolya
TEPPER, KOLYA
TEPPER, KOLYA (1879–?), Yiddish writer. Born in Odessa, Tepper became a Zionist in his youth and a member of the circle of *Aḥad Ha-Am and a delegate to the Second Zionist Congress (1898). He lived in Switzerland 1901–3, where he was a propagandist for the Zionist movement. He then returned to Russia, where he renounced Zionism for the ideology of the *Bund. He was arrested later that year in Pinsk but freed a day later by a group of Jewish workers. In 1907 Tepper fled Russia for the United States, where he began writing essays under the pseudonym "Duke D'Abruzzi" in the radical press, including the Fraye Arbeter Shtime (publ. as Zigzagn, "Zigzags," 1915). He was also a prolific translator of foreign literature, including works by Chekhov, Brandes, and Ibsen. In New York, Tepper befriended several of the poets associated with Di *Yunge and contributed to their literary efforts. Following the 1917 Revolution, he returned to Russia, then lived in Vilna and Warsaw in 1920–22, before moving back to the Soviet Union. It is not known when or how he died.
bibliography:
Reyzen, Leksikon, 1 (1926), 1183–6; lnyl, 3 (1960), 103–5; M. Ravitch, Mayn Leksikon, 1 (1945), 104–6. add. bibliography: R.R. Wisse, A Little Love in Big Manhattan (1988), 45–50.
[Melech Ravitch /
Marc Miller (2nd ed.)]