Andrejs Upits
Andrei Upits (1877. December 4, 1970 November 17) was a Latvian writer, critic, and literary critic. Born in Scriver in the family of a tenant. He attended Skriveri Parish School, then self-taught, mainly studying languages - German, Russian, English, French and Italian. He worked as a teacher, translator, was an active social worker. Under the influence of the 1905 revolution, Upits turned to the ideas of Marxism. After the February Revolution of 1917, he was elected to the Riga Council of Workers' Deputies, 1917-1918. In the winter of 2006, the German occupation authorities arrested A. Upitis. In 1919, Andrei Upits was the head of the art department of the Commissariat of Education of the Latvian Socialist Republic. In 1920, after returning to Latvia from Russia, he was twice arrested, and the writer was sentenced to death, from which he was saved by other cultural figures. After his release, he lived in Riga and Skriveri, from 1924 to 1930 he worked in the magazine "Domas". In 1940, after the occupation of Latvia, Upits was chairman of the Union of Writers of the LSSR, editor-in-chief of Karogs magazine. Head of the Department of Latvian Literature at the Latvian State University (1944-1948) and professor (1945-1951), founder and first director of the Institute of Language and Literature of the Academy of Sciences of the Latvian SSR (1946-1951), Chairman of the Writers' Union (1944-1954). In 1945, A. Upitis was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philology, in 1943 - the title of Honorary Writer of the Latvian SSR, in 1946 - the title of Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Latvian SSR. After his death in 1972 in Riga, on 38 Brivibas street, the memorial museum of A. Upitis was founded. 4 and the Museum in Skriveri, Daugavas street 58. The secondary school named after Andrey Upitis Skriveri bears his name. Monument to A. Upitis (installed in 1982) is located in the Riga Kronvalda Park. The busts created by the sculptor L. Davydova-Meden were installed in Skriveri near the secondary school and museum.
