VERA MIKHAILOVNA INBER

GRAY SANDRILLON: STALIN'S PRIZE FOR TROTSKY'S NEGOTIAN

Courage is as contagious as cowardice.

Were the Leningraders heroes? Not only them: they were martyrs ...

She arrived in Leningrad on the last train before the blockade, together with her husband, doctor Ilya Davydovich Strashun. Conducted patriotic work in military units and among the population of the city, spoke on the radio. The collection "Pulkovo Meridian", a book of essays "Almost three years (Leningrad diary)", a cycle of stories about Leningrad children, "Looking through the pages of days ...:" are dedicated to the defenders of Leningrad. She was awarded the Stalin Prize. After the war she worked on the boards of the Writers' Unions of the USSR and the RSFSR.

Poems are a found formula

The cheerful and mischievous Odessa poet brilliantly wrote about Parisian fashion, which she knew firsthand after her travels in Europe. She taught ladies to dress and be modern. She wrote subtle poems in the style of acmeists and at the same time funny couplets about the groom Willie and the girl from Nagasaki:

He is a cabin boy, his homeland is Marseille,
He loves quarrels, abuse and fights,
He smokes a pipe, drinks the strongest ale
And he loves a girl from Nagasaki.

She has such small breasts
She has tattooed marks ...
But now the cabin boy leaves on a long journey,
After parting with the girl from Nagasaki ...

He arrived. In a hurry, barely breathing
And he learns that the gentleman in a tailcoat
One evening, after eating hashish,
Stabbed a girl from Nagasaki.

She herself did not know that this poem of hers went to the people and became a favorite song not only in thug Odessa, but in all camps of her homeland (Evgeny Golubovsky "An Open Fate Change").

Other songs have also been suggested, including songs about a fight in Cape Town Port, where " With cocoa on board"Zhanneta" tied the rigging ... "- She will definitely write about another shipment of cocoa. “The whole crew of the boat was wounded, they were carrying a valuable cargo. But the helmsman could still control. And he drove everything safely. I asked: "What kind of cargo was it?" The sailor replied: "Cocoa and chocolate for Leningrad children."

Vera Spenzer (named after her first husband Inber) was born on July 10, 1890 in Odessa. The only daughter of the famous Odessa publisher Moisey Spenzer and the headmistress of the gymnasium, teacher of Russian language and literature Fanny Solomonovna. As for the relationship with Trotsky, the versions are contradictory. But Leon Trotsky left memories in which he himself writes that his mother Spenzer was a nephew, that is, he himself was a cousin. Leon Trotsky entered the Odessa gymnasium in 1888 at the age of 10 and lived during these years in the Spenzer family. Moses Spenzer was then already about 30 years old, just at that time his daughter Vera was born. Vera even dedicated poetry to meetings with a high-ranking relative in the Kremlin.

In the light of the lamps - green light -

Usually at the end of the day

In a six-column study

You accept me.

Tighten the floor with a red cloth,

And like cannons on a rock

Four formidable phones

Shine on the desk ...

To the left are the windows, and to the right,
In the void between the columns,
The neighboring powers are hanging
Spread out on canvas.

And grander than others
In the ring of its seas and mountains,
Hanging Soviet Russia
The size of a large carpet.

And we are talking. And these
Conversations flow slowly
As long as the pendulum marks
Fifteen bronze minutes.

And the sentry report
I obey as a soldier
You say "Sunday
I will be glad to see you "

And leaning over the decree,

And shading my forehead with my hand,

You forget about it,

It’s as if I wasn’t there. ”

With her first husband, renowned journalist and literary critic Nathan Inber, she went abroad for several years. In Paris she published the first book of poems "Young Wine". Then her books "Bitter Delight" and "Swearing Words" were published. After a trip to Constantinople, Vera Inber returned with her 2-year-old daughter, while her husband remained in exile. In Russia at this time, her relative Leon Trotsky makes a revolution. She was not going to miss this trump card. Subsequently, Nathan Inber's father will live in France for a long time, their daughter Jeanne, who will return to Russia to her mother as a perfect Frenchwoman.

“If the first twenty years of her life was determined by the position of her only daughter, then the next fifty - by kinship with the“ enemy of the people ”No. 1. About the years of her youth, we can say - the art of living, about the mature - the art of surviving "(Alena Yavorskaya).

The poet Alexander Bisk recalled: “The House of Inbers (in Odessa) was a kind of branch of the Literature (literary society). And there were always Tolstoy, Voloshin and other visiting guests. Vera reigned there, reading her cutesy, very feminine poems at supper. "... She was very short (one and a half meters with heels), but even that she brought into fashion. "

The events of October and the events that followed them forced many to leave the life of the capital and flock to sunny, carefree Odessa, from which, on occasion, it was possible to flee abroad. Bunin mentions Odessa in "Cursed Days" (January 1918 entry): "I was at the Wednesday meeting yesterday. There were many young people. Mayakovsky behaved quite decently ... Read Ehrenburg, Vera Inber ..." The poems of Vera Inber of those children spoke of the birth of a new name in literature and poetry. At the beginning of the century, critics wrote on an equal basis about the poems of Akhmatova and Inber, this is symbolic if Akhmatova is considered a tuning fork of the poetry of the 20th century.

“The cultural life in Odessa did not freeze,” writes Vladimir Kupchenko in his book “Maximilian Voloshin in Odessa”, “20 newspapers were published! The posters reported about the concerts of Ida Kremer, A. Vertinsky, N. Plevitskaya, Leonid Utesov. Ivan Poddubny performed at the Truzzi circus. The circle of poets "Green Lamp" united the poets Adeline Adames, Eduard Bagritsky, Alexander Bisk, Leonid Grossman, Vera Inber, Valentin Kataev, Yuri Olesha, Zinaida Shishova. These were local poets. Among the newcomers to Odessa are: Ivan Bunin, Don-Aminado, Vlas Doroshevich, Natalia Krandievskaya-Tolstaya, Alexey Tolstoy, Teffi, Tatiana Schepkina-Kupernik. And also professors, artists, lawyers, journalists ... "It was from Odessa literature that the brightest Soviet writers and poets emerged - Ilf and Petrov, Valentin Kataev, Yuri Olesha, Babel, Bagritsky ..

Subsequently, the paths of the poetesses crossed in the capitals. Natalya Krandievskaya-Tolstaya noted in her memoirs the opening of a new literary cafe "Trelistnik" on Kuznetsky Most in Moscow. Poets performed on the platform between the tables - Ehrenburg, Vera Inber, Vladislav Khodasevich, Marina Tsvetaeva, Amari (Tsetlin), Boris Zaitsev, Andrey Sobol, Osorgin, Shmelev. Alexei Tolsoy and Natalya Krandievskaya also performed there.

Vera Inber, in her turn, in the article "How I Remember Alexey Tolstoy", written in 1955, told about her acquaintance with him in 1918. About how she moved to the house where the Tolstoy lived and settled on the next floor. "The Tolstoy" took patronage "over me, who had arrived in Moscow quite recently. With the Tolstoys, I began to visit literary salons that were already dying out and in newly born cafes, where prose writers and poets performed ..."

The poet has long belonged to the Constructivist Literary Workshop, headed by Selvinsky. As a journalist, she travels a lot around the country and abroad. It is published a lot. In 1927 he took part in the writing of the collective novel "Big Fires", which was published in the magazine "Ogonyok".

Finally, the moment came when kinship with Trotsky turned from a plus into a mortal danger. After the expulsion of Trotsky and the declaration of war on "Trotskyism", his relatives did not go well in the first place. All were destroyed. Only Vera Inber survived. Moreover, she managed to make a brilliant party career. After the endured fear, she will never write so easily, contagiously and poetically. Researchers of Soviet literature to this day wonder why Stalin did not touch it? One way or another, but the image of the poet's salon remains in the past and its place is taken by the uncompromising literary commissar, as Yevgeny Yevtushenko will call her.

The poet Bisk wrote in the late 1940s in America: “Vera Inber became a big man in Soviet Russia. It is fair to admit that she was able to find an acceptable non-sycophantic tone in her works. " But it is not so. Evidence of her public renunciation of Trotsky has survived, thereby demonstrating an example of the only possible attitude towards the enemies of the people. Awarded with the order. In the future, she will indignantly condemn all writers and poets who are objectionable to the authorities. Eventually it will become beyond the reach of misfortunes, those that depend on human will. But it was not possible to escape the fate of fate - she will outlive her grandson, who died in evacuation, her husband and only daughter.

Writers, poets and their family members were evacuated to Chistopol. Inber had to go there too. But, having taken care of her daughter and her six-month-old grandson, Inber herself travels with her husband, Professor Strashun, who is sent to Leningrad to work. In the territory of personal courage, face to face with the enemy, this little woman was not afraid of anything. The status of a husband, a personal car, and one's own merits to the party provided a greater chance of survival than many others, but in besieged Leningrad there were no safe places and the porridge, inadvertently turned onto coals, had to be eaten with ashes.

Vera Inber wrote the poem "Pulkovo Meridian" in besieged Leningrad, read it on the radio, in factories, in severe frosts she went to the front in military units, on warships. The patriotic performances of a small, very energetic woman supported the spirit of the besieged Leningraders. It has been compared to Shostakovich's Seventh, poetry by Olga Berggolts, and has become a part of the history of besieged Leningrad.

It would be a shame to die now, when you so want to live.

I will never forget Leningrad, all its guises.

If I only stay to live, I will write a lot more about him.

The poetess arrived in Leningrad with her husband Ilya Davydovich Strashun, who was appointed director of the 1st Medical Institute by almost the last train Moscow-Leningrad. The first day in Leningrad - August 24, 1941, the next day after their arrival, Mga was taken by the Germans.

Vera Ketlinskaya speaks: “One of the August days ... the office door opened and a small, graceful woman in a light coat with a bell, in a flirty hat, from under which curls of graying hair stood out, stopped on the threshold.

- Hello! I am Vera Inber, - she said cheerfully and stomped across the room in high, resonant heels, - ... I came, as it should be registered, my husband and I moved to live in Leningrad. I don't know for how long, but at least until spring.

Everyone was speechless with surprise. What is this, holy ignorance? Fascist armies surrounded the city, its fate will be decided, perhaps, on the streets ... Apparently, all this should be reported to the careless poetess? An unpleasant duty, without saying a word, was given to me - the office quickly emptied. I started a difficult explanation ...

“I know everything,” Vera Mikhailovna interrupted. “We made the last train through the Moscow State University! But, you see, the husband was given a choice - the head of the hospital in Arkhangelsk or in Leningrad. We thought and decided: my daughter and grandson have been evacuated, and I, a poet, need to be in the center of events during the war. In Leningrad, of course, it will be much more interesting.

- But…

- I understand. But, firstly, I believe that Leningrad will not be surrendered, and secondly ... Well, we’re not young, we have lived, and it’s a shame to flee to the rear.
This is how Vera Inber appeared in our small detachment of Leningrad city-dwellers ... "

Vera Inber keeps a diary, which will later be published under the title "Almost Three Years". There are few reflections or assessments in it, it is almost a summary: a list of events that she witnessed - raids, bombings, descriptions of trips to the front, everyday trifles, a description of her work, creative plans, front-line reports. Today, after many years, it is still interesting to read.

Among the entries are:
"January 27, 1942. Today Mishenka is one year old."
"February 19, 1942. I received a letter from my daughter, sent back in December, from which I learned about the death of my grandson, who did not live to be one year old. I put the rattle, reminiscent of the grandson, on the desk."

The poetess constantly works, not allowing herself to rest - "You must not let your mental stress relax to some extent. It is difficult to always be tense, but it is necessary. Everything depends on it. Work, success, and justification of life in Leningrad. And I need this excuse. I paid for Leningrad with the life of Zhanna's child. I know that for sure (June 3, 1942). "

Inber writes about how the name Pulkovo Meridian came to be: “It is an extraordinary success that Pulkovo Meridian passes through the Botanical Garden (Vera Inber lives opposite him during the blockade). I didn't know that. I learned it by chance from Uspensky. And for me this is terribly important ... I would, of course, come to the meridian, but in a roundabout way, but here - a straight line. "


The main building of the First Medical Institute (Lev Tolstoy St., 6), whose director in 1941-43 was Ilya Davydovich Strashun, husband of Vera Inber.

One of the first entries in Vera Inber's Leningrad diary "Almost three years" ( August 26, 1941) - about her apartment: “Our apartment on Pesochnaya, on the fifth floor, is high, light, half-empty. Only bookshelves and plates on the walls are plentiful. Unfading Elizabethan and Catherine's roses, nicholas, blue and gold ornament. Gray-white faience. A fragile economy. Where with him now ?!

Bedroom windows and balcony overlook the Botanical Garden. Although it is still hot, some trees are already preparing for autumn: they have dressed up in all gold and scarlet. And what else will happen in September! From the balcony one can clearly see a huge palm greenhouse, all of glass. There are few people in the garden. I haven’t been there yet. Let's go on Sunday ... "

September 9, 1941... “In the afternoon, as usual, there were several alarms, but we nevertheless decided to go to the Musical Comedy, to the“ Bat ”... In the intermission between the first and second acts, another alarm began. The administrator came out into the foyer and, in the same tone as he probably announced the replacement of the performer due to illness, he said clearly: “I ask the citizens to get as close to the walls as possible, since there (he pointed to the huge span of the ceiling) there are no ceilings here”. We obeyed and stood at the walls for forty minutes. Anti-aircraft guns were firing somewhere in the distance. After the lights out, the performance continued, albeit at an accelerated pace: secondary arias and duets were omitted ... As the car rounded the square, we suddenly saw black swirling mountains of smoke, illuminated from below by flames. All this piled up in the sky, swelled, let out terrible curls and spurs. Kovrov (the driver) turned and said in a dull voice: "The German threw bombs and set fire to the food depots." ... The houses stood on the balcony for a long time, everyone looked at the burning Badayev warehouses. We went to bed at eleven. But at two o'clock in the morning I had to (for the first time in Leningrad) go down to the shelter. .. "

Already September 17moved to the institute "in the barracks position." “Our room is very small: a desk by the window, two iron beds, a bookcase, an armchair and two chairs. To wash, you have to bring in a stool and a basin. On the walls are portraits of scientists. There is a round iron stove in the room. Outside the window are mighty poplars. We have convinced ourselves that they will protect us from the fragments. And the room itself is well located. In the depths of the letter "P", between the wings of the house ... "But there were no safe places in the city.

One of the bombs will fall into the palm greenhouse in winter - the palm trees will die from the cold by morning. Nurses in white coats will be prohibited from running across the yard (September 1941). The wounded German prisoner, having come to his senses, hysterically demands to transfer him from here. They reassure him - this is a hospital. It turns out that this is what scares him - the German pilots are trying to bomb them in the first place. The hospital where Vera Inber lived through the entire blockade was listed as number 89 on the list of military facilities, primarily subject to destruction. During the blockade, Vera Inber saw the life of the institute, which became a military hospital, to which wounded citizens and soldiers were taken.

In the span between two hospital buildings,

In the foliage, in the trees of a golden tone,

A bomb, weighing a ton, fell in the morning.

Fell without exploding: there was metal

Kind of the one who threw death here.

There is a hospital here. Hospital. Infirmary.

There is a red cross and white robes,

Here the air is warmed with compassion ...

V. Inber at the destroyed house on Lev Tolstoy Street, April 1942 (probably somewhere here they gave out the "mervishel" mentioned in Krandievskaya's poems). Photographer V. Kapustin

12 February 1942“The view of the city is terrible. Met six or seven dead on a sled. (In "The Lay of Igor's Campaign" there is a "mortal sleigh." ice, drinking water. An early, early premonition of spring. "August 5, 1942" In general, I have a feeling that only while I am working, nothing bad can happen to me. "

While I work, the bullet won't take me.

While I work, my heart will not freeze.

September 16, 1942“On behalf of the entire workshop, the boy thanked me. I asked him: does he like poetry? He paused, then replied: “But this is not poetry. This is true…"

Cold, the colors of steel

Harsh horizon ...

The tram goes to the outpost,

The tram goes to the front.

Plywood instead of glass

But that's okay

And the citizens by the stream

Pour into it.


The poetess writes about the city, houses, sculpture no less than about people. In Leningrad, it is impossible not to write about the beauty of the city.

He's still the same as before the war,

He has changed very little outwardly.

But, peering, you see: he is not the same,

Not all houses are still slim.

They are at sunset this autumn hour

They stand like people after shocks ...

The splinter at the entrance mutilated

Caryatids marble chest.

Suffering fell on these shoulders

A heavy load - they cannot be straightened.

But still, as support and protection,

There is still a caryatid ...

December 28, 1943 of the year “I.D. went to the city on business until evening, and this worries me very much. We quarreled before leaving and did not say goodbye. And in Leningrad one cannot part without saying goodbye.

And Muse, to the shining of the lamp

Drawn by a ray thread,

Was at night, under a siren howl,

In a wind-whipped raincoat,

With shining hair under the hood

With a hand armed with a pencil ...

She whispered to those who wrote: "Friend,

Do not be afraid, I will winter with you. "

To warm the Seventh Symphony,

She blew the hearth out with her breath ...

Vera Inber speaks a lot with her poems - in factories, factories, in front of soldiers at the front. She crossed Lake Ladoga, flew to Moscow, to other cities. Everywhere she was received very warmly - she was the messenger of the besieged city. July 24, 1942 “There were a lot of people at my party: all our Chistopol residents came. More precisely, the Muscovites gathered here during the war. On the podium: Isakovsky, Pasternak, Selvinsky, Aseev. It was all unusual. I was very worried, but not as always, but in a different, deeper, more ... how shall I say ... responsible excitement ... In a sense, I spoke here on behalf of Leningrad. Everyone expected this from me .. "

During the evacuation, the daughter of Vera Inber, Zhanna Gauzner, by the name of her first husband, also a writer and translator, lived in Chistopol. From 1925 to 1932 she lived with her father in Paris. I did not find definite data on this, but perhaps the departure of Inber's 13-year-old daughter is not accidental. Although Trotsky was expelled from the country in 1927, after Lenin's death in 1924, the confrontation between Stalin and Trotsky was evident. Perhaps Vera Inber thus tried to save her daughter from dangers. After returning to Moscow to her mother, Jeanne entered the Literary Institute. Zhanna Gauzner was one of the last who communicated with Marina Tsvetaeva in the evacuation - (Natalya Gromova. Wanderers of war. Memoirs of children of writers). She died of liver disease in 1962.

Having learned about the breakthrough of the blockade, the poetess recklessly begins to make plans. One of the last entries: “My hair is the color of ash. This is the gray-haired Sandrillon. But she wants to go to the ball. And, possibly, he will go. "


The building of the St. Petersburg Chemical-Pharmaceutical Academy, the former Trusevich mansion, nicknamed the "tablet" at the corner of Aptekarsky Prospect and Professor Popov (until 1940 - Pesochnaya Street). Architect A. Ol, built in 1911-1912. Poetess Vera Inber lived there during the blockade.

From the diary of Vera Inber: The house where we live is occupied by the Pharmaceutical Institute. Next to us, behind the wall, is the student dormitory. Here, very close, to cross only the Karpovka River, - the First Medical Institute and its "clinical base" - the former Peter and Paul Hospital, and now the Erisman Hospital ... The hospital named after him and the First Medical Institute is a whole town: many large and small buildings among beautiful old trees from the times of the “bishop's grove”. Once upon a time there was a bishop's courtyard, and even earlier - in the era of the founding of St. Petersburg - the estate of Feofan Prokopovich. Places rich in memories. "

According to a legend preserved within the walls of the Medical University, a monument to doctors who died during the war was installed at the very place where an unexploded bomb fell during the blockade of Leningrad

L. V. Kryuchkov in the information bulletin of the St. Petersburg State Chemical and Pharmaceutical Academy "Aptekarskiy Prospekt" No. 1-2 (36-37) (February 23, 2001) happily writes about the discovery in Inber's diary of lines about an apartment at the Leningrad Institute of Chemical Physics: "What kind of Sandy, I think, isn't it Sandy? ... My God! After all, this view is familiar to everyone who works and studies in a house at the corner of Aptekarsky and Popov. The further text is invaluable - it introduces us to those days of siege, which not everyone survived, to the atmosphere that reigned within the walls of that house, which we know no worse than our own, with which we have grown together in body and soul. To which we (the ants, on the contrary), every morning, when it is still dark, stubbornly strive from different parts of the city, and which we so reluctantly leave when there is no daylight outside the window ... " to include fragments of these records in the history of SPHFA prepared by the Department of Humanities. On the Internet, however, I could not find a detailed history of the blockade of the SPHVA.

Is it not surprising that this building was built by the architect A. Ol, who lived and met the beginning of the war in the Benois house, where N. Krandievskaya lived, he also built the house-commune "Tear of Socialism" on the current Rubinstein for Olga Bergholts - that is, with 3 out of 5 poetesses. Truly, houses are like people. Another famous house, which owes its architectural design to him, is the building of the OGPU-NKVD on Liteiny, 4.

As someone said, personal and political courage are two different things. Vera Inber was a strong personality even at the time when she wrote her graceful youthful poems. A small woman who fought the monstrous flywheel of state repression one on one - did she think she was sacrificing a poetic gift? And whether there was a victim - a new time, other songs. I remembered the Akhmatov prayer 1915 - about the renunciation of the mysterious gift of song. Akhmatova's sacrifice was not accepted.

Many did not forgive Vera Inber for her loyal style and devotion to power. Maybe they would have been forgiven for the early poems and for the blockade, if not for participation in the persecution of poets and writers unwanted by the authorities. The most implacable words about her were written by Elena Kurakina: “... she took revenge for the loss of the gift to talented poets - Dmitry Kedrin, Joseph Brodsky, even Semyon Kirsanov. Her voice was not the last in the pack of poets. Probably others. The memory of this revenge is kept in the archives of the USSR Writers' Union. And the books are empty, smooth, none, written by any author, who may have been born and lived in Odessa, but this did not affect him in any way ... "

Already in the later years of her life, Akhmatova will be awarded the prize for the best poet of the century. Some of the officials will persuade her not to go, so that Inber will lead the mission on her behalf. Akhmatova will say: "Vera Mikhailovna Inber can represent on my behalf only in the underworld." Vera Inber, opposing Pasternak, Lydia Chukovskaya, who supported the persecution of poets after the war in connection with the Decree on the magazines "Zvezda" and "Leningrad", was on the other side of the barricades.

In keeping with her long-standing habit of keeping a diary, Vera Inber added a few more lines to it: “God punished me cruelly. Youth fluttered, maturity vanished, she passed serenely, traveled, loved, loved me, meetings were cherry-lilac, hot as the Crimean sun. Vera Inber died in November 1972, having survived her husband, daughter and grandson.

How hard it is to live in winter in the world as a sire,

How hard it is to dream

That white flies own the world

And we are defeated.

P.S. A colorful woman from Odessa with character more than once got from the sharp-tongued writing fraternity. Parodist Alexander Arkhangelsky dedicated an epigram to the patessian: Inber has a child's soprano, a cozy gesture. But this fragile Diana will eat the tiger. "Korney Chukovsky recalled (Vera Imber also lived in the country house in Peredelkino) the words of her gardener:" Verenber himself is a good man. Soulful. But his wife ... God forbid !! "Chukovsky, by the way, was also an Odessa citizen. The gardener called her husband, academician Ilya Strashun, who sometimes had a hard time with his powerful wife. She put him on a strict diet, and when the academician began to rebel and demand an expansion of the diet - Vera Inber suppressed any resistance. ”It’s the prototype of Margarita Pavlovna from" Pokrovskie gates "... More precisely, the prototype of Lyudochka in his youth, with age turned into a prototype of Margarita Pavlovna Although the poetess wrote that her name was the street will not be named - in Odessa there is not only Vera Inber street, but the city very carefully preserves the memory of this extraordinary woman, poet and writer.

Biography

Vera Inber was born in Odessa. Her father Moisey (Monya) Filippovich (Lipovich) Spenzer was the owner of the printing house and one of the leaders of the scientific publishing house "Matezis" (1904-1925). Her mother, Fanny Solomonovna Spenzer (Bronstein), a cousin of L. D. Trotsky, was a teacher of the Russian language and head of a state-owned Jewish girls' school.

Leon Trotsky lived and was brought up in their family during his studies in Odessa in 1889-1895.

Vera Inber briefly attended the Faculty of History and Philology at the Odessa Higher Courses for Women. The first publication appeared in Odessa newspapers in 1910 ("Seville Ladies").

Together with her first husband, Nathan Inber, she lived in Paris and Switzerland for four years - in 1910-1914. In Paris, she published the first collection of poems at her own expense.

In 1914 she moved to Moscow. In the early twenties, like many other poets, she belonged to a literary group, in her case, to the "Literary Center of the Constructivists." In the 1920s she worked as a journalist, wrote prose and essays, traveled around the country and abroad (in 1924-1926 she lived as a correspondent in Paris, Brussels and Berlin).

For the second time since 1920, she was married to the famous electrochemist Professor A. N. Frumkin. In 1927 she took part in the collective novel Big Fires, published in the Ogonyok magazine. One of the authors of the book "The Stalin Channel" (1934).

After spending three years in besieged Leningrad during the Great Patriotic War, Inber portrayed the life and struggle of residents in poetry and prose. During the blockade in 1943, she became a member of the CPSU (b). Her third husband, professor of medicine Ilya Davydovich Strashun, worked at the 1st Medical Institute in the besieged city.

After the war, Vera Inber received the Stalin Prize in 1946 for the blockade poem Pulkovo Meridian.

She translated the poetic works of T. G. Shevchenko and M. F. Rylsky from Ukrainian, as well as such foreign poets as P. Eluard, S. Petofi, J. Rainis and others.

Inber started out as a gifted poet, but lost her talent in trying to adapt to the system. Her artlessly rhymed poems are born of reason, not heart; her poems about Pushkin, Lenin and Stalin are narrative in nature. Distinctive features of Inber's poems, dedicated to the topical themes of Soviet reality, are monotony, elongation; they are far from original.

Awards and prizes

  • Stalin Prize of the second degree (1946) - for the poem "Pulkovo Meridian" and the Leningrad diary "Almost three years"
  • two Orders of the Red Banner of Labor
  • Order of the Badge of Honor

Addresses in Leningrad

08.1941 - 1946 - Tolstoy street, 6.

Literary legends

According to legend, Vladimir Mayakovsky dedicated Vera Inber, with whom they did not agree in some literary assessments, a rather caustic epigram, especially harshly perceived by ear:

Ah, Inber, ah, Inber, what eyes, what a forehead!
So all my life I would admire, admire her b.

It is believed that Vera Inber was not offended.

This couplet allegedly became the answer to the lines of Inber herself:

Oh you goy you are the king, father,
Cut off the dashing head!

Addresses in Moscow

"House of Writers' Cooperative" - ​​Kamergersky Lane, 2

Selected collections and works

  • Collection of poems "Sad Wine" (1914)
  • Collection of poems "Bitter Delight" (1917)
  • Collection of poems "Abusive words" Odessa, ed. author (1922)
  • Collection of poems "The Purpose and the Path" M .: GIZ (1925)
  • Short stories "Equation with one unknown" M .: ZiF (1926)
  • Collection of poems "Boy with freckles" M .: Ogonyok (1926)
  • Stories "Comet Catcher" M. (1927)
  • Collection of poems "To the Son Who Doesn't exist" (1927)
  • The novel "A Place in the Sun" (1928)
  • "This is how the day begins"
  • Collection of poems "Selected Poems" (1933)
  • Travel Notes "America in Paris" (1928)
  • Autobiography "A Place in the Sun" (1928)
  • Collection of poems "Undertones" (1932)
  • Comedy in verse "Union of Mothers" (1938)
  • Poem "Travel Diary" (1939)
  • Poem "Ovid" (1939)
  • Poem "Spring in Samarkand" (1940)
  • Collection of poems "The Soul of Leningrad" (1942)
  • Poem "Pulkovo Meridian" (1942)
  • Diary "Almost three years" (1946)
  • Essays "Three weeks in Iran" (1946)
  • Collection of poems "The Way of Water" (1951)
  • The book "How I Was Little" (1954) - an autobiographical story for children
  • Articles "Inspiration and Mastery" (1957)
  • Collection of poems "April" (1960)
  • Collection of poems "Book and Heart" (1961)
  • Collection of articles "For many years" (1964)
  • Book "Turning Pages of Days" (1967)
  • Collection of poems "Questionnaire of time" (1971)

Vera Mikhailovna Inber(nee Spenzer; 1890— 1972) - Russian Soviet poetess and a prose writer. Laureate Stalin Prize second degree (1946).

Vera Inber was born in 1890 in Odessa. Her father, Moisey (Monya) Lipovich (Filippovich) Spenzer, was the owner of the printing house and one of the leaders of the scientific publishing house "Matezis" (1904-1925). Her mother, Fanny Solomonovna Spenzer (Bronstein), a cousin of Leon Trotsky, was a teacher of the Russian language and head of a state-owned Jewish girls' school. Leon Trotsky lived and was brought up in their family during his studies in Odessa in 1889-1895.

Vera Inber briefly attended the Faculty of History and Philology at the Odessa Higher Courses for Women. The first publication appeared in Odessa newspapers in 1910 ("Seville Ladies"). Together with her first husband, Nathan Inbert, she lived in Paris and Switzerland for four years (1910-1914). In 1914 she moved to Moscow. In the early twenties, like many other poets, she belonged to a literary group, in her case, to the "Literary Center of the Constructivists." In the 1920s she worked as a journalist, wrote prose and essays, traveled around the country and abroad. She was married to the electrochemist A.N. Frumkin.

After spending three years in besieged Leningrad during the Great Patriotic War, Inber portrayed the life and struggle of residents in poetry and prose. Her other husband, professor of medicine Ilya Davydovich Strashun, worked at the 1st Medical Institute in the besieged city.

In 1946 she received the Stalin Prize for the blockade poem Pulkovo Meridian. She was awarded three orders and medals.

She translated poetic works of Taras Shevchenko and Maxim Rylsky from Ukrainian, as well as such foreign poets as P. Eluard, S. Petofi, J. Rainis and others.

She was buried at the Vvedenskoye cemetery in Moscow.

A tough epigram is known and has reached the present day, which was written on it by the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, with which they did not agree in some literary assessments: "Ah, Inber, ah, Inber / - What a bang, what a forehead! / - All would look, everything would look / ". I must say that the epigram did not lead to any serious rupture, everyone who could habitually exchanged barbs, they even competed in them. Only later, with the formation of the totalitarian Soviet regime, this art form almost completely disappeared.

Selected collections and works

  • Collection of poems "Sad Wine" (1914)
  • Collection of poems "Bitter Delight" (1917)
  • Collection of poems "Abusive words" Odessa, ed. author (1922)
  • Collection of poems "The Purpose and the Path" M .: GIZ (1925)
  • Short stories "Equation with one unknown" M .: ZiF (1926)
  • Collection of poems "Boy with freckles" M .: Ogonyok (1926)
  • Stories "Comet Catcher" M. (1927)
  • Collection of poems "To the Son Who Doesn't exist" (1927)
  • The novel "A Place in the Sun" (1928)
  • "This is how the day begins"
  • Collection of poems "Selected Poems" (1933)
  • Travel Notes "America in Paris" (1928)
  • Autobiography "A Place in the Sun" (1928)
  • Collection of poems "Undertones" (1932)
  • Comedy in verse "Union of Mothers" (1938)
  • Poem "Travel Diary" (1939)
  • Poem "Ovid" (1939)
  • Poem "Spring in Samarkand" (1940)
  • Collection of poems "The Soul of Leningrad" (1942)
  • Poem "Pulkovo Meridian" (1942)
  • Diary "Almost three years" (1946)
  • Essays "Three weeks in Iran" (1946)
  • Collection of poems "The Way of Water" (1951)
  • The book "How I Was Little" (1954) - an autobiographical story for children
  • Articles "Inspiration and Mastery" (1957)
  • Collection of poems "April" (1960)
  • Collection of poems "Book and Heart" (1961)
  • Collection of articles "For many years" (1964)
  • Book "Turning Pages of Days" (1967)
  • Collection of poems "Questionnaire of time" (1971)

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She was born on June 28 (July 10 NS) in Odessa in the family of the owner of a scientific publishing house. She wrote poetry since childhood. After graduating from the gymnasium, she entered the Odessa Higher Women's Courses at the Faculty of History and Philology, but soon left for Western Europe, where she spent, occasionally returning home, about four years (a year in Switzerland, the rest of the time in Paris).


In 1912, her first collection of poems, Sad Wine, was published in a Russian printing house in Paris. In 1914 she returned to Russia, deciding to settle in Moscow. Two more collections of poems were published - "Bitter Delight" (1917) and "Abusive Words" (1922). In 1923, the collection "The Purpose and the Path" was published in Moscow, from which, in Inber's opinion, began her true literary biography.

In the mid-1920s, he approached the Constructivists, in the same years he began to write prose, essays and articles. As a journalist, she traveled a lot around the country, went abroad. In 1927-29, the books of essays "This is how the day begins" and travel notes "America in Paris" were written. In 1928 the autobiographical chronicle "A Place in the Sun" was published.

In the 1930s he published the poems "Travel Diary", "Ovid", acts as a prose writer and essayist.

During the Patriotic War, Inber was in besieged Leningrad (1941-44). The heroic defense of the city was captured by her in the verses of the collection "Soul of Leningrad" (1942), the poem "Pulkovo Meridian" (1943), in the Leningrad diary "Almost three years" (1946).

In the postwar years, Inber wrote works for children, published her poetry collections - "The Way of Water" (1951), "Book and Heart" (1961), "Questionnaire of Time" (1971), etc. In 1957, a collection of her articles on literary work was published - "Inspiration and Mastery", in 1967 - a book of memoirs "Turning Pages of Days".

She continued to travel a lot around the Union, visited Iran, Czechoslovakia and Romania as part of delegations of Soviet cultural figures. In 1972 V. Inber died.