Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was a Russian poet, novelist, and literary translator. Composed in 1917, Pasternak's first book of poems, My Sister, Life, was published in Berlin in 1922 and soon became an important collection in the Russian language. Pasternak's translations of stage plays by Goethe, Schiller, Calderón de la Barca and Shakespeare remain very popular with Russian audiences.
Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva was a Russian poet. Her work is considered among some of the greatest in twentieth century Russian literature. She lived through and wrote of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Moscow famine that followed it. In an attempt to save her daughter Irina from starvation, she placed her in a state orphanage in 1919, where she died of hunger. Tsvetaeva left Russia in 1922 and lived with her family in increasing poverty in Paris, Berlin and Prague before returning to Moscow in 1939. Her husband Sergei Efron and her daughter Ariadna Èfron (Alya) were arrested on espionage charges in 1941; her husband was executed. Tsvetaeva committed suicide in 1941. As a lyrical poet, her passion and daring linguistic experimentation mark her as a striking chronicler of her times and the depths of the human condition.
Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam was a Russian and Soviet poet. He was the husband of Nadezhda Mandelstam and one of the foremost members of the Acmeist school of poets. He was arrested by Joseph Stalin's government during the repression of the 1930s and sent into internal exile with his wife.
Anna Andreyevna Gorenko, better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova, was one of the most significant Russian poets of the 20th century. She was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in 1965 and received second-most (three) nominations for the award the following year.
Alexander Alexandrovich Blok was a Russian lyrical poet, writer, publicist, playwright, translator and literary critic.
Izabella Akhatovna Akhmadulina was a Soviet and Russian poet, short story writer, and translator, known for her apolitical writing stance. She was part of the Russian New Wave literary movement. She was cited by Joseph Brodsky as the best living poet in the Russian language. She is known in Russia as "the voice of the epoch".
Sophia Parnok was a Russian poet, journalist and translator. From the age of six, she wrote poetry in a style quite distinct from the predominant poets of her times, revealing instead her own sense of Russianness, Jewish identity and lesbianism. Besides her literary work, she worked as a journalist under the pen name of Andrei Polianin. She has been referred to as "Russia's Sappho", as she wrote openly about her seven lesbian relationships.
Titsian Tabidze, was a Georgian poet and one of the leaders of Georgian symbolist movement. He fell victim to Joseph Stalin's Great Purge, was arrested and executed on trumped-up charges of treason. Tabidze was a close friend of the well-known Russian writer Boris Pasternak who translated his poetry into Russian.
Kaisyn Shuvayevich Kuliev or Qaysin Quli was a Balkar poet. He wrote in the Karachay-Balkar language and his poems are widely translated to most languages in Soviet Union, such as Russian, Ossetian, Lithuanian, Belorussian, Armenian, and to many others languages of the former Republics of the Soviet Union and worldwide. Kaisyn Kuliev's books were published in 140 languages of Europe, Asia and America.
Diana Lewis Burgin is an author, and Professor of Russian at the University of Massachusetts Boston; she received her B.A. in Russian from Swarthmore College, her M.A. & Ph.D. from Harvard University's Slavic Languages and Literatures Department. She has been teaching Russian at University of Massachusetts, Boston since 1975.
Olga Vsevolodovna Ivinskaya was a Russian poet and writer. She was friend and lover of Nobel Prize-winning writer Boris Pasternak during the last 13 years of his life and the inspiration for the character of Lara in his novel Doctor Zhivago (1957).
Sergei Yakovlevich Efron was a Russian Empire poet, officer of White Army and husband of Marina Tsvetaeva. While in emigration, he was recruited by the Soviet NKVD. After returning to USSR from France, he was executed.
Elena Borisovna Frolova is a Russian singer-songwriter, composer, and poet. She is author and performer of songs based on poems by many Russian poets of twentieth century, including Marina Tsvetaeva, Sophia Parnok, Joseph Brodsky, Anna Barkova, Andrei Belyi, Varlam Shalamov, Maria Petrovykh, Veniamin Blazhenny, Bulat Okudzhava, and many others, as well as her own poetry. Frolova is one of few performers who uses Russian folk instrument gusli and ancient harp, along with classical six-string guitar for the accompaniment. During 25 years of work she created more than 630 songs and published more than 40 music albums.
Lydia Leonidovna Pasternak, married name Lydia Pasternak Slater, was a Russian research chemist, poet and translator.
Larisa Novoseltseva is a Russian singer-songwriter, composer, performer of Russian and Ukrainian folk songs and romances, and creator of project Return of the Silver Age. She is author of music and performer of songs and ballads on poems by more than forty Russian poets, mostly of the Silver Age, such as Osip Mandelstam, Nikolay Gumilev, Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetaeva, Maksimilian Voloshin, Konstantin Balmont, Alexander Vertinsky and many others, including Bella Akhmadulina who, according to Novoseltseva, can be viewed as the last poet of Silver Age based on her poetic language and style. Novoseltseva created more than 300 songs and published more than 20 music albums. She usually performs solo using guitar or piano for the accompaniment. More recently, she frequently appears with violinist Michael Czerwinski.
Sofia Polyakova was a Soviet classical philologist, Byzantine specialist and scholar of ancient Greek and Byzantine authors. She published the first collection of the works of the Russian poet Sophia Parnok and was the first scholar to unravel the relationship of Parnok and Marina Tsvetaeva. Her work on Parnok, revived scholarly interest in the poet.
Olga Tsuberbiller was a Russian mathematician noted for her creation of the textbook Problems and Exercises in Analytic Geometry. The book has been used as a standard text for high schools since its creation in 1927. Sophia Parnok, noted Russian poet dedicated her verses in the Half-voiced cycle to Tsuberbiller, and the educator cared for Parnok during her final illness, later becoming her literary executor. She later became the partner of the noted opera singer, Concordia Antarova. Tsuberbiller was designated as an Honored Scientist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1955.
Adelaida Gertsyk was a Russian translator, poet and writer of the Silver Age. Her literary salons of the 19th and early 20th century brought many of the poets of the age together. Almost forgotten after her lifetime, scholarship renewed on Gertsyk at the end of the Soviet era and she is now deemed one of the significant poets of her age.
Lyudmila Erarskaya, was a Russian actress who performed from the pre-revolutionary period until her death in Moscow in 1964. She was an associate and friend of some of the most noted intellectuals of her era and was most known for her relationship with and inspiration of poems by Sophia Parnok.
Ariadna Sergeyevna Èfron ; 5 September [O.S. 18 September] 1912 – 26 July 1975) was a Russian translator of prose and poetry, memoirist, artist, art critic, poet ; she was a daughter of Sergei Èfron and Marina Tsvetaeva.
