Mózes Kahána

Mozes Kahana (; ; , 26 November 1897 – 11 April 1974) was a Hungarian-born writer, poet, essayist and revolutionary active in Romania, the Soviet Union and Hungary.

Biography Early life Kahana was born in 1897 into a Jewish family in Gyergyóbékás, Kingdom of Hungary, Austria-Hungary (now Bicazu Ardelean, Neamț County, Romania). He was the younger brother of psychiatrist Ernő Kahána (1890–1982). In his hometown, Kahana published his first poems under the name Joel Béla.

Political and literary career In 1918, with the formation of the First Hungarian Republic, he moved to Budapest, where he published under the pseudonym Gyergyai Zoltán. In the following year, when the Hungarian Soviet Republic was established, he became a member of the Communist Party of Hungary, with the help of Aladár Komját, and worked as a journalist for the newspaper "Vörös Újság" (Red Newspaper). He also served in a Red Regiment in Csepel. and expressionist poems, Túl a politikán (with illustrations by Hans Mattis-Teutsch). While in Austria, he founded the magazine Egyseg („Unity”) in 1922, meant to unite leftist Hungarian emigres from Vienna.

In 1923, he returned to Transylvania, settling in the city of Târgu Mureș, which was already part of Romania. (becoming a member of its Central Committee in 1924), and imprisoned at infamous Doftana prison. His arrest was condemned by the International Union of Revolutionary Writers. He was involved in the Proletkult movement and published poetry and essays in various Soviet journals. He also contributed to the development of the Esperanto language in the USSR.

In 1929, at the instructions of the Komintern, he was sent to Berlin, then to Paris, where he began to publish prose in Hungarian. Cezar Petrescu In 1937 he moved back to Romania and this time settled in Bessarabia. In 1940, after the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, he moved to Cluj, where he published his most famous novel: Hat nap és a hetedik („Six days and seventh”). He was a contributor to the Korunk newspaper. In 1941 he settled in Chișinău, in the Moldavian SSR.

During the Second World War he was evacuated to Central Asia; after the war he returned to Chișinău. He was criticised again at the Congress of the Union of Soviet Writers in 1959, having to apologize. He did not return to Moldova, but stayed in Moscow, where he worked as a translator. where he continued writing and translating. He was welcomed as a master of modern Hungarian literature (he received the Attila József Prize in 1968). He joined the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party and held various positions in the cultural sector. Successively, re-edits of his early novels appeared: Biharvári taktika (1965), Tarackos (1971), Két nő egy képen (1974), precum și noi romane, cărți de proză scurtă și memorii: Földön, föld alatt (1967), Legyen másként (1967), Szabadság, szerelem (1968), Íratlan könyvek könyve, önéletrajzi (1969), Vízesés: Mai moldován elbeszélők (1971), Szélhordta magyarok (1971), A kölet boljdozi élet (1972), Lemegy a nap (1973), Sóvárgások könyve, önéletrajzi (1973).

Although at the time, he was one of the most famous and popular Hungarian writers, Mozes Kahana committed suicide on April 11, 1974, throwing himself out of the window of a hospital in Budapest. His ashes were stored in the Kerepesi Cemetery in Budapest. His works and translations helped shape the cultural landscape of Hungary and the Soviet Union in the 20th century.