Literary archives of poetess Riva Naumovna Balyasnaya

Riva Balyasnaya is a Jewish Soviet poetss (1910-1980). Riva Balayasnya was born in 1910, in Radomyshl, Zhitomir Region of Ukraine. Author of 15 poetry books published between 1934-1980 in Yiddish, Ukrainian in Russian.Riva Balyasnaya was arrested in 1952 for promoting “Jewish Nationalist and Zionist” ideas in her poetry and literary works. She was released from prison in 1954 and continued her literary work in Kyiv until her death in 1980.

Forms part of the Claims Conference International Holocaust Documentation Archive at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. This archive consists of documentation whose reproduction and/or acquisition was made possible with funding from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.

Source of acquisition is the Instytut i︠u︡daïky (Judaica Institute), Kiev, Ukraine. A part of the collection has been donated to the Judaica Institute in Kiev by the relatives of the author. The rest of the materials had been transferred to the Judaica Institute in Kiev from the other archives: The Central State Archives of the Public Organizations of Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine (TsDAGO), Fond 263, opis 1, delo 44792-the criminal investigated case: interrogation in 1952; the Central State Archives of the Literature and Art (TsDALM) of Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine- personal papers), and TsDALM, Fond 590, opis 2, delo 404-her poems, biography and critics reviews of her poetry. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives received the collection via the United States Holocaust Museum International Archives Project in Jan. 2011 and accretion in June 2017.