Russia

The Russian poet, essayist, and journalist Maria Stepanova was born in Moscow. She is the author of over ten poetry collections, three of which have recently been translated and published in English: War of...

A versatile critic, translator, prose writer, and theorist of poetry, Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev was an innovative, imaginative, and influential poet who enjoyed particular prominence in Russia during the...

Russian poet and civil rights activist Natalya Yevgenyevna Gorbanevskaya was born in Moscow. She attended Moscow State University, but she was expelled for her political activities. She would later earn a ...

A Russian poet, novelist, and dissident, Irina Ratushinskaya was born in Odessa and studied physics, rather than the humanities, at Odessa I. I. Mechnikov National University, in part because she feared the...

Soviet poet, playwright, and wartime correspondent Konstantin Simonov was born in St. Petersburg into a military family. His father died shortly after World War I, and years later, when his stepfather was ...

Russian geologist, poet, and novelist Vladislav Zanadvorov was born in the town of Perm, Russia. He attended a technical high school and then traveled frequently on geological expeditions throughout Russia...

Romantic poet Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov was born in Moscow, Russia and was raised in the Penzenskaya province by his wealthy maternal grandmother. His mother, an aristocrat, died when he was three years ...

Russia’s most famous poet, Alexander Pushkin was born into one of Russia’s most famous noble families. His mother was the granddaughter of an Abyssinian prince, Hannibal, who had been a favorite of Peter I...

Vladimir Nabokov, a Russian émigré who began writing in English after his 40s, is considered one of the most brilliant writers of the 20th century. A trilingual author, equally competent in Russian, English...

Born in Siberia in 1932, Yevgeny Yevtushenko was a Russian poet, novelist, actor, and director who achieved great fame in the Soviet Union during the cultural “Khrushchev Thaw” that occurred following the ...

Andrei Voznesensky was born in Moscow in 1933. He was one of a small group of poets to achieve great prominence in the Soviet Union during the cultural "Khruschev Thaw." Voznesensky, along with Yevgeny Yevtushenko...

Poet and novelist Ivan Bunin was the first Russian writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. Born in Voronezh, Russia to a noble family that counted the poets Anna Búnina and Vasíly Zhukovsky among...

Vladimir Mayakovsky was a Russian Soviet poet and playwright. Born in Baghdati (now Mayakovsky), Georgia, then part of the Russian Empire, Mayakovsky moved to Moscow in 1906 with his family after his father...

During his brief lifetime, Sergei Yesenin gained recognition as one of the better poetic voices of the revolutionary period in Russia. Born of peasant parents, he received very little formal education, and...

A journalist, historian, and poet, John Reed is best known for his Ten Days that Shook the World, an eyewitness account of the Russian Revolution. Though he thought of himself as a poet and fiction writer,...

The son of a law professor and a writer, Russian Symbolist poet and playwright Alexandr Blok was born in St. Petersburg in 1880. He studied law and then philology at the University of Petersburg. A supporter...

Nobel laureate Boris Pasternak was highly regarded in his native Russia as one of the country’s greatest post-revolutionary poets. He did not gain worldwide acclaim, however, until his only novel, Doctor Zhivago...

Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva (also Marina Cvetaeva and Marina Tsvetayeva) was born in Moscow. Her father was a professor and founder of the Museum of Fine Arts, and her mother, who died of tuberculosis when...

Osip Mandelstam ranks among the most significant Russian poets of the 20th century. He was born in Warsaw, Poland in or around 1891, but soon afterward his family moved to St. Petersburg, Russia. In St. Petersburg...

Poet, translator, essayist, and playwright Iosif Alexandrovich Brodsky was reviled and persecuted by officials in his native Soviet Union while the Western literary establishment lauded him as one of the finest...