| Yakub Kolas Якуб Колас | |
| Birth Name: | Kanstantsin Mihaylavich Mitskievich |
| Birth Place: | Akinchytsy, Minsk Governorate, Russian Empire |
| Death Date: | August 13, 1956 (aged 73) |
| Death Place: | Minsk, Byelorussian SSR, Soviet Union |
| Occupation: | Writer, dramatist, poet, translator |
| Nationality: | Belarusian |
| Period: | 1906–1956 |
Yakub Kolas (also Jakub Kołas, Belarusian: Яку́б Ко́лас, – August 13, 1956), real name Kanstantsin Mikhailovich Mitskievich (Канстанці́н Міха́йлавіч Міцке́віч, Russian: Константи́н Миха́йлович Мицке́вич,) was a Belarusian writer, dramatist, poet and translator. People's Poet of the Byelorussian SSR (1926), member (1928) and vice-president (from 1929) of the Belarusian Academy of Sciences.[1]
In his works, Yakub Kolas was known for his sympathy towards the ordinary Belarusian peasantry. This was evident in his pen name 'Kolas', meaning 'ear of grain' in Belarusian. He wrote collections of poems Songs of Captivity (Russian: Песни неволи, 1908) and Songs of Grief (Belarusian: Песьні-жальбы, 1910), poems A New Land (Belarusian: Новая зямля, 1923) and Simon the Musician (Belarusian: Сымон-музыка, 1925), stories, and plays. His poem The Fisherman's Hut (Belarusian: Рыбакова хата, 1947) is about the fight after unification of Belarus with the Soviet state. His trilogy At a Crossroads (Russian: На перепутье, 1925) is about the pre-Revolutionary life of the Belarusian peasantry and the democratic intelligentsia. He was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1946 and 1949.
Kanstantsin Mitskievich was born in in a village Akinchytsy of Minsk Governorate, Russian Empire, in a family of a forester. He graduated from Nesvizh Teachers' Seminary in 1902, and was sent as a teacher to a village in Palesse region. He took part in an illegal teachers convention in 1906, was fired and jailed for three years in Minsk. After jail he became a journalist for Nasha dolya newspaper, there he first used the name "Yakub Kolas". In 1915 he was mobilized into the army. In 1916, after graduating from the Moscow Alexander Military School with the rank of warrant officer, he served in a reserve regiment in Perm. In the summer of 1917 he was sent to the Romanian front, but for health reasons he was demobilized. In 1921 Kolas returned to Minsk to work in the newly established Institute of Belarusian Culture. In 1928 Institute was transformed into the Academy of Sciences, Kolas became an academician there, and later a vice president. In 1926 he was named a "People's Poet of Belarus". During the World War 2 Kolas was in evacuation in Russia. He died in Minsk, in August 13, 1956.[2]
In his honor, the Yakub Kolas Square and the Yakub Kolas Street in the center of Minsk bear his name.