Ol'ga Berggol'ts

Katharine Hodgson (University of Exeter)

Ed. by Neil Cornwell, University of Bristol
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 2.2.2.00: Post-1917 Writing and Culture in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, 1917-present.
Vol. editors: Neil Cornwell (University of Bristol), Roman Koropeckyj (University of California, Los Angeles), Andrei Rogatchevski (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway)

Dates

Born 16 May 1910
Died 13 Nov 1975
Activity 1924-1975

Places

Born in Russia
Active in Russia

Activities

Primary

Poet

Other

Autobiographer
Novelist

Resources

Berggol'ts' Works

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Ol’ga Berggol’ts is generally thought of as an official Soviet writer, best known for the poetry she wrote and broadcast on the radio during the Leningrad Siege of 1941-44. Further evidence of her apparent conformity may be found in the award the Stalin Prize in 1950 for a narrative poem,

Pervorossiisk

[

First Russian Commune

, 1949], telling the story of a collective farm set up by Petrograd workers in the early years after the 1917 Revolution. Nevertheless, Berggol’ts was no straightforwardly orthodox Soviet writer. In 1965 she published a collection of poetry entitled

Uzel

[

The Knot

], in which a number of poems relating to her arrest and imprisonment in 1938-39 appeared for the first time; more of her “prison poetry” appeared posthumously in the late 1980s. Berggol’ts was a…

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1952 words

Citation: Hodgson, Katharine. "Ol'ga Berggol'ts". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 14 December 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5869, accessed 22 November 2024.]