Ilya Lvovich Selvinsky (, 24 October 1899 – 22 March 1968) was a Soviet Jewish poet, dramatist, memoirist, and essayist born in Simferopol, Crimea. Biography Selvinsky grew up in Yevpatoriya in a Jewish family. His father was a furrier merchant. In 1919, Selvinsky graduated from a gymnasium in Yevpatoriya, spending his summers as a vagabond and trying his hands at different trades, including sailing, fishing, working as a longshoreman and circus wrestler, and acting in an itinerant theater. Selvinsky published his first poem in 1915 and in the 1920s experimented with the use of Yiddishisms and thieves' lingo in Russian verse. He is credited with innovations in Russian versification, including the proliferation of taktovik, a Russian nonclassical meter. Extensive travel and turbulent adventures fueled Selvinsky's longer narrative works and cycles, "loadified" (term used by the Russian constructivists) with local color. Selvinsky briefly joined the anarchist troops in the Russian Civil War but later fought on the side of the Reds. He moved to Moscow in 1921 and studied law at Moscow University, graduating in 1922. From 1924 until its dismantlement in 1930, Selvinsky was the leader of the Literary Center of Constructivists (LTsK), an early Soviet modernist group, and edited several landmark anthologies by constructivist authors (e.g., The State Plan of Literature). In the late 1920s, the LtsK counted among its members poets Eduard Bagritsky, Vera Inber, and Vladimir Lugovskoy; critic Kornely Zelinsky; prose writer Evgeny Gabrilovich; and others. In the middle to late 1920s, after the publication of Records, The Lay of Ulyalaev (1924) and the narrative poem Notes of a Poet (1927), Selvinsky achieved fame and acclaim. In 1929, his tragedy Army 2 Commander was staged by Vsevolod Meyerhold. Selvinsky's major early Jewish works include Bar Kokhba (1920, published 1924), a powerful monument to Jewish—and Judaic—survival; "Anecdotes about the Karaite Philosopher Babakai-Sudduk" (1931); "Motke Malech-hamovess [Motke the Angel of Death]" (1926); and The Lay of Ulyalaev. "Portrait of My Mother" (1933) contains a constructivist bitter comment about Jewish-Soviet assimilation: "Henceforth her son's face will remain defiled/Like the Judaic Jerusalem,/Having suddenly become a Christian holy site." In the late 1930s Selvinsky was an important mentor to the younger generation of Soviet Russian poets. During World War II, Selvinsky served as a military journalist and combat political officer in his native Crimea, North Caucasus, and Kuban. He joined the Communist Party in 1941, and was wounded and decorated for valor.