Biography Robert Rozhdestvensky

Robert Rozhdestvensky (1932 – 1994) is a noteworthy poet and a song writer. He was born Kosikha, Altai Krai. His parents, both in the military, were called to the front when the war began, leaving him with grandmother, and after her death, Robert was moved to an orphanage for a few years. His first poem My dad goes camping with a rifle… was published in 1941. In 1950-51, he studied philology at Petrozavodsk University, then entered the Gorky Literary Institute. While still a student, he became a member of the powerful Union of Soviet Writers, a rare achievement for a man of 22.

Rozhdestvensky’s writing continued the tradition of declamatory, at times rhetorical poetry that Mayakovsky had established. Along with such poets as Yevtushenko, Akhmadulina, and Voznesensky, he was a part of the new wave of “the ‘60s generation,” the reach tradition of unofficial poetry flourished in the late 1950s and into the 1960s in the increased freedom of expression during the Khrushchev thaw in the Soviet Union. Like his fellow poets, Rozhdestvensky gave public poetry readings at the stadiums packed with admirers, on the square next to the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky’s life-size monument.

It was at this time that Rozhdestvensky published, in the Moscow monthly magazine Youth his best-known collection of poems, Requiem, a homage to the dead of the Second World War. In 1970, Rozhdestvensky’s Requiem appeared in book form and his former teacher at the military musical college, the composer Dmitri Kabalevsky, wrote a score for it. Rozhdestvensky’s two-volume Selected Works were published in 1979 and his three-volume Complete Works in 1985.

He also worked with leading Soviet composers such as Alexandra Pakhmutova, Boris Mokrousov, and Yakov Frenkel, who set his verse to music. These were songs about love, happiness and the wonderful Soviet life. Rozhdestvensky played quite a role in official public affairs such as a senior member of the Soviet Committee for the Defense of Peace, and served on the World Peace Council.

At one time, he was a host of Documentary Screen TV show on Central Soviet television, on which he showed much official propaganda against the West. He was awarded the U.S.S.R. State Prize for his poem “210 Steps” in 1978 and the “Voice of the City” collection in 1983. Due to his efforts as Chairman of the Commission on Literary Heritage Vladimir Vysotsky, the first Soviet edition of Vladimir Vysotsky’s Nerve was published in 1981. From 1986 he served as Chairman of the Commission on the Literary Heritage of Osip Mandelstam. He took a direct role in the rehabilitation of Mandelstam. As the Chairman of the Commission on Literary Heritage of Marina Tsvetaeva, he helped the opening of the Marina Tsvetaeva House- Museum.

Robert Rozhdestvensky died of a heart attack in 1994.

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Rozhdestvensky