«I Would Like to Leave a Mark on Poetry»: Creative Biography of Boris Burshtyn

The article is based, first of all, on the archival materials of the Literary 
Museum of the Smolensk State University. The paper reconstructs the life and 
creative path of Boris Sergeyevich Burshtyn, a poet, literary and theater critic, 
translator of the people’s poets of the USSR. Much attention is paid to his Smo- 
lensk period of life. In the early 1920s, Burshtyn was an organizer of the Arena 
Artel of Word Artists and the Club of Poets, that played an important role in the 
development of Smolensk poetry. As a critic, he collaborated with local and na- 
tional magazines. Smolensk forever made friends with the poet Mikhail Isakovsky 
and Alexander Tvardovsky, who considered Burshnyn their literary mentor. 
In 1938, in connection with the repressions of the state security agencies, 
he moved to Moscow, where he began to engage in literary translation, highly 
appreciated by his contemporaries.