Robert Rozhdestvensky

Robert Ivanovich Rozhdestvensky (Russian Роберт Иванович Рождественский, scientific transliteration Robert Ivanovič Roždestvenskij; born June 20, 1932 at the village Kossicha in the Altai region, † August 19 1994 in Peredelkino ) was a Russian writer.

Curriculum vitae

Much of his youth spent Rozhdestvensky was born in 1932 in the city of Omsk. His father was an officer and fell in 1945 during the Second World War. His mother worked as a doctor on the front and gave the Son to be the grandmother. After her death, came the young Robert Ivanovich with 9 years in an orphanage. Already during his school years, he began to be interested in poetry and literature. His first book of poems was published in 1950. After leaving school, he began studying at the University of Petrozavodsk. From 1951 to 1956 he continued his studies at literary Institute in Gorky, where he received his degree in 1956.

In the 1950s and 1960s during the Khrushchev thaw, he joined a group of writers who broke with the strict notions of socialist realism. In the early 1960s his fame grew through numerous readings of his poems, especially at universities and colleges.

In 1979 he was awarded the State Prize of the USSR. As of 1986, Rozhdestvensky sat for a greater democratization of Russian politics and supported calls for glasnost and perestroika.

In 2004 Roschdestwenskis daughter Xenia Roschdestwenskaja published (* 1970), a book about Roschdestwenskis work. The book was first printed in an edition of only 1,000 pieces. In the book there are previously unpublished poems, rare private photos, collected by Rozhdestvensky newspaper clippings and notes of his colleagues and friends. After outstanding reviews in many Russian newspapers it was printed in a larger edition.