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Olga Berggolts, Soviet poetess, prose writer and playwright, was born
On 3 (16) May 1910 Olga Berggolts was born, a Soviet poetess, prose writer and playwright, an employee of Leningrad radio during the Siege, who became the voice and muse of the besieged city.
Olga Berggolts was born in St. Petersburg in the family of a doctor Fyodor Berggolts (1885-1948) and Maria Grustilina (1884-1957). She spent her childhood on the outskirts of St. Petersburg in the Nevskaya Zastava neighbourhood of her father's place of service. During the Civil War, together with her younger sister Maria, she was taken to relatives in Uglich, where she lived in the cells of the Epiphany Monastery. Childhood impressions of this time were reflected in the story "Uglich" (1932), as well as in the autobiography "Day Stars" (1955).
O. F. Berggolts was fond of poetry from childhood. Her first poem "Lenin" was published in 1925 in the newspaper "Red Weaver". Later she began to engage in dramaturgy. She studied at the Higher Courses at the Institute of Art History and at the Philological Faculty of the Leningrad State University, from which she graduated in 1930. She worked as a correspondent for the newspaper "Sovetskaya steppe" in Kazakhstan, then as an editor at the newspaper of the Leningrad plant "Elektrosila" (1931-1934). In 1933-1935 she published the essays "The Years of Sturm", a collection of stories "Night in the New World", as well as a collection of "Poems". In 1934 she was admitted to the Union of Writers of the USSR.
In 1937-1939 in connection with the so-called "Averbakh case" and the "Literary Group case", on suspicion of participation in "anti-Soviet, terrorist organisations" she was subjected to political repressions and expelled from the Union of Writers of the USSR. In the summer of 1939 she was rehabilitated. Soon after her release O.F. Berggolts recalled: "They took out my soul, dug in it with stinking fingers, spit in it, shit, then stuck it back in and said: live!".
In February 1940 she joined the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (b). During the Great Patriotic War she stayed in besieged Leningrad. She worked in the literary and dramatic editorial office of the Leningrad radio, almost daily conducted radio programmes, during which she read her poems. Later, the texts of radio speeches O. F. Berggolts published in the collection "Says Leningrad" (1946).
During the war years she created her best works, including "February Diary" (1942), "Leningrad Poem" (1942), "Leningrad Notebook" (1942), "To the Memory of the Defenders" (1944), the play "They Lived in Leningrad" (1944; together with G. Makogonenko), "Your Way" (1945), the script "Leningrad Symphony" (1945; together with G. Makogonenko). She worked on the radio film about the blockade "900 Days" (script G. Makogonenko, L. Magrachov), which premiered on 27 January 1945, the anniversary of the liberation of the city. On 27 January 1943, O. F. Berggolts informed Leningraders about the breakthrough of the blockade. The poetess was called the "voice" and "muse" of besieged Leningrad, the "blockade madonna". In 1943 she was awarded the medal "For the Defence of Leningrad".
In 1946, after the decision of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (b) "On the magazines "Zvezda" and "Leningrad", directed against Mikhail Zoshchenko and Anna Akhmatova, for supporting the literary O. F. Berggolts for some time was in disgrace. The poetess was accused of "decadence and individualism", "chanting the theme of suffering and the horrors of the blockade", the first edition of the book "Leningrad Speaks" was withdrawn from libraries.
In 1950, O. F. Berggolts published the poem "Pervorossiysk" about the Petrograd workers who founded in Siberia the country's first commune of bread-winners. For this work she was awarded the Stalin Prize of the III degree (1951). In 1952 she published a cycle of poems about Stalingrad, and after a business trip to Sevastopol she created the tragedy "Fidelity" (1954). Autobiographical story "Day Stars" (1959), reflecting the fate of her generation, is considered the pinnacle of O. F. Berggolts's work.
O. F. Berggolts died on 13 November 1975 in Leningrad. Contrary to her will, she was buried not in the Piskaryovsky Cemetery, but in the Literators' Bridges of the Volkovsky Cemetery. On 3 May 2005 a sculptural composition by V. Gorevoy was installed on the poetess' grave.
After her death, her diaries were confiscated and sent to the Central (now Russian) State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI), where access to them was forbidden for more than 20 years. In 2008, RGALI received the right from the poetess's heirs to publish her archive. In 2016, 2017 and 2020, three volumes of the collection "Berggolts O. F. My Diary", covering the periods 1923-1929, 1930-1941 and 1941-1971.
O. F. Berggolts owns the famous lines "No one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten" from the poem "Here lie the Leningraders" (1959), carved on the memorial stele at the Piskaryovsky Memorial Cemetery, where victims of the siege and defenders of the city are buried.
Lit.: Берггольц О. Ф. Мой дневник: в 3 т. М., 2016, 2017, 2020; Громова Н. Ольга Берггольц: Смерти не было и нет. М., 2018; Соколовская Н. Ольга. Запретный дневник. СПб., 2010; Хренков Д. От сердца к сердцу. О жизни и творчестве О. Берггольц. Л., 1982.
Based on the materials of Presidential Library:
Берггольц О. Ф. Ленинград: стихи [и поэмы]. М., 1944;
Берггольц О., Макогоненко Г. Они жили в Ленинграде: пьеса в 4 действиях, 9 картинах. М.; Л., 1945 (доступно в электронном читальном зале).