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Olga Fyodorovna Berggolts[1] (Russian:Ольга Фёдоровна Берггольц,IPA:[ˈolʲɡəˈfʲɵdərəvnəbʲɪrˈɡolʲts]ⓘ; May 16 [O.S. May 3] 1910 – November 13, 1975) was aSoviet andRussian poet, writer, playwright and journalist. She is most famous for her work on theLeningrad radio during the city'ssiege, when she became the symbol of the city's resilience.
Olga Berggolts was born in a working suburb ofSaint Petersburg. Her father Fyodor Khristophorovich Berggolts (1885—1948) was a surgeon of half-Russian and half-Latvian descent, although in 1942 he was deported to theKrasnoyarsk Krai as "an ethnicGerman and a son of a principal shareholder" (his father was in fact a factory worker).[2] He studied in theImperial Military Medical Academy underNikolay Burdenko and served as a military doctor during theWorld War I; after theOctober Revolution he was mobilized by theRed Army and continued working at thehospital train.
Olga's mother, Maria Timofeyevna Berggolts (née Grustilina) (1884—1957), was a native Russian. She also had a younger sister Maria (1912—2003) who would later become an actress of the Leningrad State Theatre of Musical Comedy. With the start of theRussian Civil War in 1918 Fyodor Berggolts sent his family toUglich where they lived in the formerBogoyavlensky Monastery up until 1921. Upon return Olga entered a Petrograd labor school which she finished in 1926.[2]
Her verses dedicated toVladimir Lenin were first published in 1924. In 1925, she joined a youth literature group 'The Shift' where she became acquainted withBoris Kornilov. In 1927, Boris and Olga entered the State Institute of Art History, and in 1928, they got married. Same year their daughter Irina was born.[2][3][4] Soon the institute was shut down. Some of the students —including Olga, but not Boris— were moved to theLeningrad University.
In 1930, she graduated from the philological faculty and was sent toKazakhstan to work as a journalist for theSoviet Steppe newspaper. During this period Olga divorced Kornilov and married her fellow student Nikolay Molchanov. She also published her first book for childrenWinter-Summer-Parrot (1930).
After returning to Leningrad in 1931, she started working as a journalist for the newspaper of the electric power plant (Electric Power). In 1932 she gave birth to her second daughter Maya who died in just a year. Her feelings and thoughts on this period were expressed in such books asThe Out-of-the-way Place (1932),Night (1935),Journalists (1934), andGrains (1935). Such works by Berggolts asPoems (1934) andUglich (1932) were approved of byMaxim Gorky. In 1934 she joined theUnion of Soviet Writers.[2]
During the late 1930s, Berggolts survived several personal tragedies. Her first daughter Irina died in 1936, aged seven, and in 1937, she lost her third child during the full-term pregnancy following the interrogation on the so-called "Averbakh Case" (she contactedLeopold Averbakh of theRussian Association of Proletarian Writers at the start of 1930). Soon, her former husband, Boris Kornilov, was arrested "for taking part in the anti-SovietTrotskyist organization" and executed in February 1938. In December, Olga herself was arrested on the same account and imprisoned. She spent seven months in prison, but denied all accusations. All this caused a birth of her fourthstillborn child. During that time period, she wrote poems published as aTrial anthology during the 1960s. She was subsequently released and completely exonerated in 1939.[2]
In 1940, she joined the Communist Party. After a long period of silence, her novelDream and a book of storiesVitya Mamanin were published to a great acclaim, although she had to hide her prison poetry.
With the start of theGreat Patriotic War in June 1941, Berggolts was sent to work at the Leningrad Radio House. She spent almost every day of theblockade in Leningrad working at the radio, encouraging hungry and depressed citizens of the city by her speeches and poems. Her thoughts and impressions on this period, on problems of heroism, love, faithfulness can be found inFebruary Diary (1942),Leningrad Poem (1942),Your Way (1945), and some others.[5]
In January 1942, she survived another personal tragedy: her second husband Nikolay Molchanov died of hunger. Olga later dedicated a poem29 January 1942 and her bookThe Knot (1965) to Nikolay. In March 1942, Olga, who suffered from a critical form of dystrophy, was forcefully sent by her friends to Moscow using theRoad of Life, despite her protests. On 20 April, she returned to Leningrad and continued her work at the Radio House. On her return, she married Georgy Makogonenko, a literary critic, also a radio host during the siege. In 1943, she was awarded theMedal "For the Defence of Leningrad".[2]
Together with her husband, she wrote a screenplay turned a playBorn in Leningrad and a requiemIn Memory of Defenders (1944) on the request of a woman whose brother was killed during the last days of the siege. On January 27, 1945, Berggolts, Makogonenko and their colleagues released a "radio film" entitled900 days that included various fragments of reports, voices, sounds and music pieces recorded during the siege. She also published a book of memoirsLeningrad Is Talking and a playThey Lived in Leningrad based on her war experience.
Berggolts also wrote many times about heroic and glorious events in the history of Russia, such asPervorossiysk (1950), a poem about the Altaycommune organized by the workers ofPetrograd;Faithfulness (1954), a tragedy about the defence ofSevastopol in 1941–1942; andThe Day Stars (1959), an autobiographical novel that was turned into a movie of the same name byIgor Talankin in 1968.[2] Olga's voice could be also heard in another Talankin's movieIntroduction to Life (1963) as she reads her poetry.
On May 9, 1960,Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery was opened, dedicated to the victims of theSiege of Leningrad, with the words by Olga Berggolts engraved on the wall behind the Motherland monument. The last line "No one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten" became a catchphrase since, often mentioned in Russia during memorial days.
Olga Berggolts died on 13 November 1975, and was buried at Literatorskie Mostki of theVolkovo Cemetery.[6]
Aminor planet3093 Bergholz discovered bySoviet astronomerTamara Smirnova in 1971 is named after her.[7] A street in theNevsky District bears her name, as well as a central street inUglich.[8][9] A monument in her memory was opened in Saint Petersburg in May 2015.[10] Also on June the complete collection of diaries by Olga Berggolts was published for the first time by theRussian State Archive of Literature and Art.[11] A crater on Venus is named after her.[12]
American playwright Ivan Fuller wrote a play about Berggolts in 2009 calledAwake in Me.
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