Edidovich Mikhail Davidovich (07.02.1941, Riga — 17.01.2008, Jūrmala) — writer, journalist, poet, translator. During the war, he was evacuated from Riga together with his parents the day before the fascists arrived, and returned to Riga in 1945. In 1960, left for Central Asia; in 1961, moved to Magadan, then to Provideniya Bay on the Chukotka Peninsula. He worked as a procurement agent at an industrial combine, as a master craftsman sewing jackets and gloves from reindeer hides, as a sailor on a whale-hunting vessel, as a reindeer herder, and for a time headed a department at a district Komsomol committee. In Chukotka, he began writing poems and reports for the local press and began his professional journalistic career: first for the newspaper “Mayak Severa,” and in the spring of 1965 for the newspaper “Polyarnik,” created with his participation. In 1969, graduated by correspondence from the journalism faculty of the Far Eastern University; by that time, he was already working as a correspondent for the Magadan Radio and Television Committee. In the 1970s, he returned to Latvia but, due to the “fifth paragraph,” was unable to find work at any editorial office and returned to Magadan, where he worked for ten years in the local radio committee and wrote dozens of investigative articles for local and national press. In 1975 in Magadan, he published his first collection of poetry, “The Sea Smells of Ice”; in 1981, his second — “The Breath of Winter,” “Skuridin,” and “A Hole in the Constellation.” Poems were published in the newspapers “Sovetskaya Chukotka,” “Magadansky Komsomolets,” “Magadanskaya Pravda” and others, in the almanac “Na Severe Dalnem” and the journal “Dalny Vostok.” In Moscow, books of E.'s translations from the Chukchi, Eskimo and Evenki languages were published. In 1982, he was admitted to the Writers' Union of the USSR; in 1984, returned to Riga and found work at an advertising agency. In 1988, when the Latvian Society of Jewish Culture was created in Riga, he was elected a member of its board. He published articles on “Jewish” topics, worked as deputy editor of the independent Jewish journal “Herald of Jewish Culture,” and participated together with Sam Kheifets, leader of the ensemble Via Tercia, in the production of the musical-poetic performance “Jewish Dialogues,” touring with this performance through many cities of the Soviet Union. In 1990, emigrated to the USA. He was taken on as a staff member at the oldest American newspaper in Russian, “Novoye Russkoye Slovo,” where for ten years he published first-class journalism in almost every issue, edited the “News from Israel” column, and met and interviewed famous contemporaries: New York Governor Pataki, New York Mayor Giuliani and ex-Mayor Koch, Congressmen Lautenberg, Pascrell, Klein, Madeleine Albright, Ronald Lauder, Eli Wiesel, Israeli politicians Netanyahu, Barak, Lieberman and Shcharansky. Concurrently, he hosted “Jewish Dialogues” on the New York radio station “Narodnaya Volna,” later running the “Expert Bureau of Mikhail Edich” column in the newspaper “Yevreysky Mir.” In the autumn of 2004, he returned to Latvia, settled in Jūrmala, and wrote poetry and prose (including an unfinished novel about Chukotka, “Rails Turn into Sled Tracks”). In 2007, he published a collection of poetry “Red Number” in Riga.

I. Brod