Kozakov, Mikhail Emmanuilovich

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KOZAKOV, MIKHAIL EMMANUILOVICH

KOZAKOV, MIKHAIL EMMANUILOVICH (1897–1954), Soviet Russian author. Born in the Ukraine, Kozakov studied medicine and law. His most ambitious work was the novel Krusheniye imperii ("The Fall of the Empire," 1956), a much enlarged version of his Devyat tochek ("Nine Points," 4 brochures, 1931–39; serialized from 1929). It deals with the last years of Imperial Russia and with the Revolution, and portrays numerous historical figures. Some of Kozakov's early tales, such as Abram Nashatyr (1927), depict life in a Jewish shtetl of the old Pale of Settlement, similar to the one Kozakov remembered from his own childhood. He wrote the novella Chelovek, padayushchiy nits ("The Man Who Prostrates Himself "), one of the very few frank portrayals of antisemitism under Soviet conditions to appear in the U.S.S.R. (1929, 1932).

bibliography:

Russkiye Sovetskiye Pisateli Prozaiki, 2 (1964), index.

[Maurice Friedberg]