1915–1979
○ Lung cancer
The poet of 'Wait for Me': six-time Stalin Prize-winning war correspondent and literary bureaucrat
"I was not a soldier, only a correspondent. But I have a piece of earth I will never forget — the field near Mogilev where, in July 1941, I saw for the first time how our men knocked out and burned 39 German tanks in a single day."
Poet of 'Wait for Me' (1941), the most beloved Soviet wartime lyric. A six-time Stalin Prize-winning war correspondent who turned his frontline experience into The Living and the Dead trilogy. As a literary bureaucrat he joined the Pasternak persecution, yet pushed through Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1934–1938First poems; graduated Gorky Literary Institute; joined Writers' Union
- 1939War correspondent at Khalkhin Gol
- 1941–1945Krasnaya Zvezda war correspondent; witnessed Berlin surrender
- 1942'Wait for Me' published — a nationwide phenomenon
- 1946–1950 / 1954–1958Editor-in-chief of Novy Mir (two terms)
- 1950–1953Editor-in-chief of Literaturnaya Gazeta
- 1959–1971Completed The Living and the Dead trilogy
- 1974Hero of Socialist Labor; Lenin Prize
Related historical events
- 1938–1941The Soviet-Japanese Border Wars and the Neutrality PactKhalkhin Gol war correspondentHe was sent as a war correspondent to the Battle of Khalkhin Gol in 1939.
- 1941–1945The Great Patriotic WarKrasnaya Zvezda war correspondent · poet of 'Wait for Me'He covered every front from Khalkhin Gol to the fall of Berlin, witnessed the Mogilev tank battle in July 1941, and attended the German surrender signing in May 1945. His lyric 'Wait for Me' (1941) was the most beloved poem of the Soviet war. Folded into soldiers' pockets, it became a prayer for those awaiting return.
"Wait for Me" — A Letter That Became a Poem
In July 1941, Simonov survived the Western Front and briefly returned to Moscow. Staying overnight at Lev Kassil's dacha in Peredelkino, he wrote "Wait for Me" in a single sitting. He considered it too personal to publish, but handwritten copies spread rapidly among friends. Told it was "the only cure for longing for my wife," he relented. Published on page 3 of Pravda on 14 January 1942, the response was explosive. Frontline soldiers cut it from the newspaper and folded it around photos of their loved ones; women on the home front recited it through tears. As Richard Stites put it, "recited by millions as though it were a prayer" (the unofficial anthem of the Great Patriotic War). The poem was dedicated to actress Valentina Serova, whom Simonov married in 1943. In a cruel irony, Serova did not wait: by 1942 she was romantically linked with Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky. Yet "Wait for Me" transcended its origins, enduring in Soviet memory as an eternal promise of love and return.