The radio voice of the besieged city
In February 1942, just after her husband Molchanov starved to death, Berggolts read over the radio: "I, too, am a widow of Leningrad."
A Soviet poet who became the living voice of Leningrad during the 1941–1944 siege, reading her poems and speeches over the radio almost daily to citizens on the edge of starvation. Arrested in 1938 in the 'Literary Group' case, she endured torture and stillbirth in prison but refused to confess; she was released and exonerated in 1939. Her wartime works *February Diary* (1942) and *Leningrad Poem* (1942) faced the siege's horror and its citizens' dignity without flinching, and her words carved on the Piskaryovskoye Memorial, 'No one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten', became an enduring symbol of war memory. She won the Stalin Prize (1951) for *Pervorossiysk* and opened a path for Thaw-era literature with her autobiographical novel *Day Stars* (1959).
Career Timeline
- 1925First poem 'Lenin' published in *Red Weaver*
- 1930Graduated Leningrad University; first book *Winter-Summer-Parrot*
- 1934Joined the Union of Soviet Writers
- 1938–1939Arrested, imprisoned seven months, released and exonerated
- 1941–1944Radio broadcaster throughout the Siege of Leningrad
- 1942Published *February Diary* and *Leningrad Poem*
- 1951Won Stalin Prize for *Pervorossiysk*
- 1959Published autobiographical novel *Day Stars*