Ivan Shamiakin

Who was Ivan Shamiakin?

Ivan Shamiakin — a Soviet Belarusian writer, he was perhaps one of the most prolific writers of the Soviet BSSR, writing in a socialist realist style.

He was born in 1921 the village of Karma, Homiel Voblast, Belarus, studied construction engineering in a vocational school, then fought in World War II, taking part in battles near Murmansk and in Poland. After the war he studied at the Homel Pedagogical University, worked as an editor and had different Communist Party positions in the local party offices in Belarus. In 1963 he worked at the United Nations as a part of the Belarusian UN delegation. In 1980 Shamiakin became the chief editor of the Soviet Belarusian Encyclopedia. In 1994 he became the academician of the National Academy of Sciences.