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1-10 of 10
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Boris Pasternak was born in Moscow on February 10, 1890 into an artistic family of Russian-Jewish heritage. His father was an acclaimed artist named Leonid Pasternak, who converted to Christianity, and his mother was a renown concert pianist named Rosa Kaufman. Their home was open to family friends such as composers Sergei Rachmaninoff and Aleksandr Skryabin as well as writers Rilke and Lev Tolstoy. Pasternak had a happy childhood, being brought up by prominent intellectuals in a cosmopolitan atmosphere. He studied music at the Moscow Conservatory and philosophy at the University of Marburg, Germany. In 1914 he returned to Moscow and published his first collection of poems. His work at a chemical factory in the Urals during WWI was later used as material for his novel "Doctor Zhivago".
In 1917 he fell in love with a Jewish girl and wrote "My Sister Life", a collection of passionate metaphoric poems that brought him international recognition and had an impact upon Russian Symbolist and Futurist poetry. Pasternak cautiously supported the Russian revolution, but was shocked with the brutality of communists. His parents and sisters emigrated to Europe in 1921. During the "Great Terror" of 1930s, Pasternak became disillusioned with the Soviet reality. He came under severe political attack and devoted himself to making translations of classic works: Shakespeare's "Hamlet", "Macbeth", "King Lear", Goethe's "Faust", as well as Paul Verlaine, Rainer Maria Rilke and other Western poets. His translations of Georgian poets favored by Joseph Stalin probably saved his life. Stalin spoke with Pasternak in 1934 over the phone, and questioned his association with poet Osip Mandelstam, who was executed upon Stalin's order. Later Stalin crossed Pasternak's name off the arrest list, quoted as saying "Don't touch this cloud dweller", alluding to his book "The Twin in the Clouds".
During 1940s-50s Pasternak wrote his autobiographic novel "Doctor Zhivago". A model for Lara in the novel was the poet's muse, beautiful and kind Olga Iwinskaja, an editor at "Novy Mir" magazine. In 1949, when she was pregnant by Pasternak, she was arrested by KGB on false accusations of "spying" and spent 4 years in prison-camp. Their unborn baby was lost, and Pasternak suffered a heart attack. After the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, Olga Iwinskaja was released and reunited with Pasternak, who completed "Doctor Zhivago". He tried to publish it in the Soviet magazine "Novy Mir", but was rejected. The manuscript of "Doctor Zhivago" was secretly smuggled out of the Soviet Union and was first published in Italy in 1957.
Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958. But Soviet authorities declared him a "traitor" and attacked him with a campaign of persecution, terrorizing Pasternak up until his death in 1960. He was so abused by the Soviet authorities, that he became unable to go to accept the Nobel Prize and was forced to decline the honor. He lived the life of fear and insecurity that was imposed upon him and millions of others under the Soviet totalitarian system. He ended his life in poverty and a virtual exile in an artist's community of Peredelkino near Moscow. His last poems are devoted to love, to freedom, and to reconciliation with God. Pasternak was rehabilitated posthumously in 1987. In 1988, after being banned in the Soviet Union for three decades, "Doctor Zhivago" was published in the same "Novy Mir" magazine as a sign of changing times. In 1989 Pasternak's son accepted his father's Nobel Prize medal in Stockholm.- Director
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Lily Brik, one of Russian and Soviet culture's most enigmatic women who was admired by many important men, was known for her wit and beauty and helped many talented people to become famous.
She was born Lilya Urievna Kagan, in 1891, in Moscow, Russia, into a Jewish family of a lawyer and a music teacher. Young Lilya grew up in a trilingual family environment, she received an excellent private education and absorbed from the intellectual and artistic circles of both Russian capitals, St. Petersburg and Moscow. Lilya studied piano professionally; in addition to her native Russian and Yiddish she spoke fluent German and French. She studied art and architecture and graduated from Moscow Institute of Architecture.
Lilya and her junior sister, Elsa, who later became known as Elsa Triolet, were both famous for their personal charm and special beauty. Lilya was just a teenage girl when she attracted attention of the famous Russian opera basso Feodor Chaliapin Sr.. At that time, as Lilya realized the power of her charm, intellect, and sex appeal, she became part of Russian cultural milieu. She was arguably one of the most famous and influential women in the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s Russian and Soviet culture. Lily Brik's face was on the cover of LEF magazine and on numerous posters of that time. She also helped many talented men to become famous and happy, and some men, like poet Mayakovsky, were unhappy without her company.
On February 26, 1912, Lilya married Osip Brik in Moscow, and soon the couple moved to St. Petersburg. They had a dacha-home in Levashovo, an upscale suburb of St. Petersburg. There, in July of 1915, Lilya's junior sister, Elsa, introduced her boyfriend, poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, to Osip and Lilya. Mayakovsky became obsessed with both, charming and coquettish Lilya Brik, and intellectually challenging Osip Brik. But Lilya remained married to Osip Brik, who extended his hospitality to her greatest admirer. Osip Brik financed the publication of futurist poetry collection 'Cloud in Pants' (1915) by Vladimir Mayakovsky, which was inspired by their muse, Lilya. At that time Lilya became involved in silent film. In 1918 she made her film debut co-starring with Mayakovsky in Zakovannaya filmoi (1918) which was produced by the "Neptun" film studio in St. Petersburg.
During the Russian Revolution the Briks lived in Petrograd (St. Petersburg). There Lilya's husband briefly served at the special militarized Revolutionary Automobile Group, and had risen to the rank of a Commissar. In June of 1920, the Briks moved to Moscow where Osip Brik was hired as a Legal Councel for the CheKa (predecessor of the KGB). From there Osip Brik was fired with a verdict, "for negligent attitude and evasion from work", but the Briks still managed to help emigration of the parents of writer Boris Pasternak.
During the 1920s the Moscow apartment of Lily and Osip Brik was the meeting place for such Russian culture luminaries as Boris Pasternak, Maxim Gorky, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Sergei Eisenstein, Kazimir Malevich, Alexander Rodchenko, Yuri Tynyanov, Vsevolod Meyerhold and many others. Lily and Osip Brik were among the most active proponents of new artistic ideas in art, literature, theatre and film in the 1910s - 1930s Russia. They were both important members of Russian Formalism and Futurism in literature and art. In 1922-23 Lily and Osip Brik made a trip to Europe and visited Wassily Kandinsky and Bauhaus in Germany.
In the 1920s, Lily Brik directed two films. In 1926, she produced and directed a documentary titled 'Jews on the land', based on a scenario by Mayakovsky and Viktor Shklovskiy about Jewish collective farms in Russia. Then Lily Brik directed a parody on "bourgeous cinema" titled 'Steklyanny glaz' (aka.. The Glass Eye 1929). From 1922-1928 Lily Brik was also involved in publishing the magazine 'LEF' (Leftist Front of Arts), which became the platform for the LEF group, and for the Russian Dada and Constructivist art. Lily Brik's portrait by Alexander Rodchenko appeared on the cover of LEF magazine. She was the inspirational force for the group of Russian avant-garde writers, artists and film directors, such as Vladimir Mayakovsky, Alexander Rodchenko, Lev Kuleshov, Dziga Vertov, Sergei Eisenstein, Sergei Yutkevich, Viktor Shklovskiy, V. Ivanov-Zhemchuzhny and others.
In 1930, while she was on a trip in Europe, Lily Brik learned that her close friend and film partner Vladimir Mayakovsky committed suicide after his breakup with actress Veronika Polonskaya. Lily, who previously twice saved him from committing suicide, was too far away to be able to help him this time. After Lily Brik's letter to Joseph Stalin, who approved her idea to publish the collected works of Mayakovsky, his poetry was included in the Soviet school curriculum and reissued in massive printings. She divorced from Osip Brik. From 1930-1937 she was married to Soviet General Vitali Primakov, who was falsely accused of relations with Anti-Soviet Trotskyist organization and was executed in 1937, during the Moscow Trials and "Great terror" under dictatorship of Joseph Stalin.
During hard times Lily Brik was supported by none other, than Nikolay Cherkasov who was a strong supporter of retired and disabled actors and writers. He personally donated substantial sums of money to many less fortunate actors and cinematographers who suffered under the communist regime. Cherkasov found that Lily Brik was left homeless in Moscow, and that she has no income. Cherkasov used his star power to pressure the Soviet authorities: he wrote a letter to the Soviet Government requesting "good care and accommodation for actress Lily Brik, the widow of writer Vladimir Mayakovsky" and soon Lily Brik was provided with a decent place to live in central Moscow.
From 1938-1978 she was married to writer Vasily Katanyan. The home of Lily Brik and Vasili Katanyan was the meeting place for unofficial cultural milieu in the 1950s and 1960s Moscow. At that time Lily Brik played important role in supporting the new generation of talented writers, musicians, artists, and filmmakers in the former Soviet Union. She was instrumental in the early career of poet Andrei Voznesensky and filmmaker Sergei Parajanov as well as other aspiring talents. In 1978, after suffering from an incurable illness, she committed suicide by taking a lethal dose of sleeping pills. That was on August 4, 1978, in Peredelkino, Moscow, Russia.
Lily Brik was model for portraits by such famous artists as Marc Chagall, Alexander Tyshler, Alexander Rodchenko, David Burlyuk, Fernand Léger, and Henri Matisse.- Aleksandr Kazantsev was born on 2 September 1906 in Akmolinsk, Russian Empire [now Astana, Kazakhstan]. He was a writer, known for Planeta bur (1962), Chariots of the Gods (1970) and Target... Earth? (1981). He died on 13 September 2002 in Peredelkino, Moscow Oblast, Russia.
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Robert Rozhdestvenskiy is a Soviet and Russian poet, translator, songwriter.
Rozhdestvenskiy was born as Robert Petkevich, in the village of Kosikha, West Siberia. Father - Stanislav Petkevich, worked in the NKVD. In 1941 he was drafted into the Red Army. With the rank of lieutenant, he commanded a platoon of the separate engineer battalion. Killed in action in Latvia in 1945. Mother - Vera Fyodorova, a military doctor, before the war she was the director of a rural primary school, and at the same time studied at a medical institute. His parents divorced when Robert was five years old. Mother remarried, stepfather - Ivan Rozhdestvenskiy, military man. Robert took the surname and patronymic of his stepfather. Since 1934, he lived with his parents and grandmother in Omsk. At the beginning of the war, his mother was called to the front and Robert remained with his grandmother Nadezhda Fyodorova.
Robert's first publication was the poem "My dad goes on a hike with a rifle" ('Omskaya Pravda', July 8, 1941). In 1943 he studied at the military music school. In 1950, the first adult publications of Robert Rozhdestvenskiy's poems appeared in the magazine 'Na rubezhe' (Petrozavodsk). In the same year, Rozhdestvenskiy tries to enter the Literary Institute named after Maxim Gorky, but unsuccessfully. He studies for a year at the historical and philological department of Petrozavodsk State University. In 1951, on his second attempt, the poet managed to enter the Literary Institute (graduated in 1956), he moved to Moscow. At the same time he met Yevgeniy Yevtushenko, and later Bulat Okudzhava and Andrei Voznesensky.
In 1955, the young poet's book "Flags of Spring" was published in Karelia. A year later, the poem "My Love" was also published there. In 1955, Robert, while practicing in Altay, met conservatory student Aleksandr Flyarkovsky, with whom the Rozhdestvenskiy's first song, "Your Window," was created.
A characteristic property of Rozhdestvenskiy's poetry is its constantly pulsating modernity, the living relevance of the questions that he poses to himself and to us. These questions concern so many people that they instantly resonate in a wide variety of circles. If you arrange Rozhdestvenskiy's poems in chronological order, you can be convinced that the poet's lyrical confession reflects some essential features characteristic of social life, its movement, maturity, spiritual gains and losses.- Writer
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Gennady Shpalikov was born on 6 September 1937 in Segezha, Karelian ASSR, Russian SFSR, USSR [now Republic of Karelia, Russia]. He was a writer and actor, known for Dolgaya schastlivaya zhizn (1966), Ya shagayu po Moskve (1964) and You and Me (1971). He was married to Inna Gulaya and Natalya Ryazantseva. He died on 1 November 1974 in Peredelkino, Moscow Oblast, Russian SFSR, USSR [now Russia].- Writer
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Bella Akhmadulina was a prominent Russian poet, one of the bold female voices in contemporary Russian literature, whose ecstatic performances attracted audiences of thousands to her appearances at concert halls and stadiums.
She was born Isabella Akhatovna Akhmadulina on April 10, 1937 in Moscow, Russia. Her father, Akhat Valeevich Akhmadulin, and mother, Nadezhda Makarovna Lazareva, had mixed ancestry of Tatar, Russian, Georgian, and Italian heritage. Akhmadulina finished high school and attended the Gorky Literary Institute in Moscow. There she suffered from political pressure and was temporarily expelled, because she supported Boris Pasternak. Her talent prevailed, and after a yearlong hiatus she returned to college, graduating in 1960 as a writer.
Akhmadulina came to prominence during the post-Stalin thaw, when a loosening of censorship led to a flowering of the arts. Her first poems were published in 1955 in the official Soviet magazine "October". Her deliciously fresh early poetry of the 1950s-60s was part of the revival during the cultural "Thaw" initiated by Nikita Khrushchev. Along with poets Yevgeniy Yevtushenko, Andrei Voznesensky, Robert Rozhdestvensky and Bulat Okudzhava, she played an important role in the liberation of the collective consciousness after decades of repressions under dictatorship of Joseph Stalin. Akhmadulina was sometimes compared with Anna Akhmatova for her sincere feminine style. But later, after Nikita Khrushchev was dismissed by Leonid Brezhnev, the "Thaw" ended and her style was misjudged by Soviet critics as eroticism. Akhmadulina was barred from the Writer's Union and banned from publication at the same time as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and other Soviet dissidents. In response to the ending of the "Thaw" she titled her next book of poetry "Oznob" (Fever, 1968), it was published in Frankfurt, Germany, and in the USA under the title "Fever and other poems" (1969).
Akhmadulina was a staunch proponent for freedom of speech and human rights in the Soviet Union. She publicly defended Andrei Sakharov, Lev Kopelev, Georgi Vladimov', Vladimir Voinovich and other dissidents. When she was banned from the Soviet press and media, Akhmadulina delivered her statements through international press and radio. He poetry has been translated into English, Japanese, Italian, Arabic, French, German, Polish, Czech, Danish, Armenian, Georgian, Latvian, Kurdish, Romanian and many other languages worldwide. "There is only one honorable reason for writing poetry - you can't do without it," she said in an interview during her first visit to the United States in 1977.
The main themes of Akhmadulina's works are friendship, love, and relations between people. Her sensational public appearances, startling images and intensely personal style, couched in classical verse forms, established her as one of the Soviet Union's leading literary talents. As she matured, her themes became more philosophical, even religious, or they dwelled on the nature of poetic language. "O magic theater of a poem,/spoil yourself, wrap up in sleepy velvet./I don't matter," she wrote in one characteristic verse. Besides her poetry and prose, she wrote numerous essays about Russian writers, such as Vladimir Nabokov, Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva, Vladimir Vysotskiy, Bulat Okudzhava and Evgeni Evtushenko, among others. Nobel Prize winner Joseph Brodsky, once placed Akhmadulina above Russian poets of her generation and described her verses as a "treasure of Russian poetry." Like so many Russian writers, Akhmadulina stood for more than literary accomplishment. To Russian audiences she embodied the soul of poetry and expressed, in her clashes with the authorities, the moral imperative behind Russian literature.
Bella Akhmadulina received numerous awards and decorations from the Soviet and Russian state. She was made Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Literature (1977). She was awarded the Order of Friendship of Peoples (USSR, 1984), "Nosside" Prize (Italy, 1992), "Pushkin" Prize (Germany, 1994), Presidential Prize (Russia, 1998). She was awarded the U.S.S.R. State Prize in 1989 and the State Prize of the Russian Federation in 2004. Despite her shaky official reputation, she was always recognized as one of the Soviet Union's literary treasures and a classic poet in the long line extending from Lermontov and Pushkin.
Her talent, her feminine beauty and a multitude of her high profile romantic affairs, sometimes comparable to that of Marilyn Monroe, made her bohemian life a stark contrast with the Soviet gloom. Beautiful and charismatic, Akhmadulina married a series of prominent artists, starting with Yevgeniy Yevtushenko, whom she met at a student gathering in 1954. She made an indelible first impression, with her "round, childish face," thick red hair tied in a braid and "slanting Tatar eyes flashing," as he recalled in his 1963 memoir, "A Precocious Autobiography." "This was Bella Akhmadulina, whom I married a few weeks later." She was seventeen, and he was twenty one. Although Mr. Yevtushenko wrote a series of love poems to her, the marriage did not last, and Ms. Akhmadulina would later claim not to remember the relationship. In the 1960s, she had a passionate romance with actor Vasiliy Shukshin who was her partner in film and TV performances. Later, she went on to marry the short-story writer Yuriy Nagibin, then the children's writer Gennadi Mamlin. She also had a relationship with director Eldar Kuliyev which produced a daughter, Elizaveta Kulieva, who also became a poet. In her later years, she was married to Boris Messerer, a notable Russian theater and film artist.
Bella Akhmadulina died of a heart failure on November 29, 2010, at her home in Peredelkino, a suburb of Moscow, Russia. Her death caused a considerable mourning in Russia. Thousands lined up to attend her funeral service at the Central House of Writers, then she was laid to rest near the tomb of Andrei Voznesensky in Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow. Russian president Medevdev paid tribute, he wrote that Akhmadulina's poetry was a "classic of Russian literature" and her death was an "irreparable loss."- Yuli Edlis was born on 3 July 1929 in Bender, Romania [now Tighina, Moldova]. He was a writer, known for Svoy paren (1974), Zhazhda nad ruchyom (1968) and Deti kak deti (1978). He died on 30 November 2009 in Peredelkino, Moscow province, Russia.
- Armands Neylands-Yaunzems was born on 26 May 1970 in Riga, Latvian SSR, USSR [now Latvia]. He was an actor, known for Kobra. Antiterror (2003), Lyubov.ru (2008) and Brachnyy kontrakt (2009). He died on 21 September 2010 in Peredelkino, Moscow Oblast, Russia.
- Cyril Pavlov was born on 8 October 1919 in Makovskie Vyselki, Ryazan oblast, Russia. He died on 20 February 2017 in Peredelkino, Moscow oblast, Russia.
- Patriarch Alexiy II was born on 23 February 1929 in Tallinn, Estonia. He died on 5 December 2008 in Peredelkino, Moscow province, Russia.