Vera Mikhailovna Inber (russian: link=no, Вера Михайловна Инбер), born Shpenzer (10 July 1890, Odessa11 November 1972, Moscow), was a Russian and Soviet poet and writer.

Biography

Her father Moshe owned a scientific publishing house "Matematika" ("Mathematics"). Moshe was cousin to the future socialist revolutionary

Leon Trotsky Lev Davidovich Bronstein. ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky; uk, link= no, Лев Давидович Троцький; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trotskij'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky''. (), was a Russian ...

. The nine-year-old Lev (Trotsky) lived with Moshe and his wife Fanni in their

Odesa Odesa (also spelled Odessa) is the third most populous city and municipality in Ukraine and a major seaport and transport hub located in the south-west of the country, on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea. The city is also the administrative ...

apartment when Vera was a baby. Inber briefly attended a History and Philology department in Odessa. Her first poems were published in 1910 in local newspapers. In 1910–1914, she lived in Paris and Switzerland; then she moved to Moscow. During the 1920s, Inber worked as a journalist, writing prose, articles, and essays, and traveling across the country and abroad. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, she lived in besieged Leningrad where her husband worked as the director at a medical institute. According to her ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' obituary, she "wrote for the newspaper ''Leningradskaya Pravda'' and broadcast over Leningrad radio in efforts to keep up the morale and spirit of the hard‐pressed population." Much of her poetry and prose during those times is dedicated to the life and resistance of Soviet citizens. Inber translated into Russian such foreign poets as

Paul Éluard Paul Éluard (), born Eugène Émile Paul Grindel (; 14 December 1895 – 18 November 1952), was a French poet and one of the founders of the Surrealist movement. In 1916, he chose the name Paul Éluard, a matronymic borrowed from his maternal ...

and Sándor Petőfi, as well as Ukrainian poets

Taras Shevchenko Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko ( uk, Тарас Григорович Шевченко , pronounced without the middle name; – ), also known as Kobzar Taras, or simply Kobzar (a kobzar is a bard in Ukrainian culture), was a Ukraine, Ukrainian p ...

and

Maksym Rylsky Maksym Tadeyovych Rylsky ( uk, Максим Тадейович Рильський; russian: Максим Фадеевич Рыльский; in Kyiv – 24 July 1964 ''id.'') was a Ukrainian poet, translator, academician, Doctor of Philologi ...

. She dabbled in

cabbala Christian Kabbalah arose during the Renaissance due to Christian scholars' interest in the mysticism of Kabbalah, Jewish Kabbalah, which they interpreted according to Christian theology. It is often transliterated as Cabala (also ''Cabbala'') t ...

, although it had been forbidden by her elders.

Awards

In 1946, she received the Stalin Prize for her siege-time poem ''Pulkovo Meridian''. She was also awarded several medals.

English translations

*''Maya'', from ''Such a Simple Thing and Other Stories'', FLPH, Moscow, 1959
from Archive.org
*''The Death of Luna'', from ''Soviet Short Stories: A Penguin Parallel Text'', Penguin, 1963. *''Leningrad Diary'', Hutchinson, UK, 1971. *''Lalla's Interests'', from ''Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida'', Penguin Classics, 2005.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Inber, Vera 1890 births 1972 deaths 20th-century Russian journalists 20th-century Russian short story writers 20th-century Russian translators 20th-century Russian women writers People from Odessky Uyezd Women poets from the Russian Empire Writers from Odesa Communist Party of the Soviet Union members Stalin Prize winners Recipients of the Order of the Red Banner of Labour Jewish poets Odesa Jews Socialist realism writers Russian women journalists Russian women poets Russian women short story writers Soviet journalists Soviet short story writers Soviet women poets Ukrainian–Russian translators Burials at Vvedenskoye Cemetery