Musical Poet of the 60s

Poet Robert Rozhdestvensky (1932-1994), a cult figure of Soviet and Russian poetry, would have been 70 years old on June 20.

A provincial boy who initially enrolled in the Philological Faculty at the Karelian University in Petrozavodsk, Rozhdestvensky later moved to the Moscow Literary Institute. He graduated from the institute in the middle of the “Thaw” of 1956 and quickly joined the ranks of young and promising Soviet poets, which included Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Andrei Voznesensky and Bella Akhmadulina. The young poets would gather at famous poetry reading evenings in Moscow’s Polytechnical Museum and read their works to a rapt audience.

Rozhdestvensky’s poems were infused with patriotic themes and he became especially famous after the publication of his “Requiem” in 1961. The poem was written in memory of those who fell on the front in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 and was put to music by composer Dmitry Kabalevsky.

Other best-loved poems and collections included “Uninhabited Island” (1962), “Letter to the 30th century” (1963), Dedication (1970), Seven Poems (1980), Insomnia (1991) and Intersection (1992).

Many of Rozhdestvensky’s poems were turned into songs. And millions of music lovers associate the poet with Georgian singer Vakhtang Kikabidze’s rendition of “My Years—My Wealth.” Then there was the whole cycle of songs from the TV movie, Seventeen Moments of Spring. Most notable was the song Mgnoveniya (“Moments“). Every Russian knows the song’s beautiful line: “Don’t look down on the moments, time will pass and you will probably realize it yourself: the moments are flying like bullets past your temple.”

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, when, struggling to survive economically, Russians stopped being interested in poetry, Rozhdestvensky wrote for himself. “Robert sincerely believed in everything Soviet,” his widow Alla Kireeva-Rozhdestvenskaya said in a recent interview with Karavan Istory magazine. “... His contemporaries thought he was bought and paid for by the Soviet powers. But, as a matter of fact, Robert sincerely believed in it—up until the moment when it all became clear to him. Then began his slow death—it was scary for Robert to root out and kill his faith, and he didn’t want to fight for life anymore.”