Inna Lisnyanskaya was born in Baky, the capital of Azerbaijan, at that time a republic inside the USSR, in 1928. Her father was of Jewish ethnicity, and mother — of Armenian. Her Armenian grandmother baptized her in Armenian Orthodoxy when she was a child. Inna Lisnyanskaya has grown in Baku, in the house where three languages were present: Yiddish, Russian and Armenian. In 2000, she said to Maxim D. Shrayer of Boston College, US, editor of Jewish-Russian anthology, that in 1944, when became known about the Holocaust, she officially claimed that she was of Jewish ethnicity, to protest the fascist murder of Jewish people; she believed in Jesus Christ as well as wrote about the Jewish culture in her poetry. When Inna was a 5 grade class pupil, she was working as an aide in an Azerbaijani Military Hospital during the last period of World War 2 where were treated Soviet soldiers with facial wound. Inna Lisyanskaya was learning during one year in Baku University, then dropped the learning. She began writing some poetry, as well as translations from Azerbaijani in Russian, since 1948, her first collection of poetry was published in 1957 in Baku. She drove to the Soviet Capital of Moscow in 1960. Once, Inna Lisyanskaya was, in early 1960s, listening to Semyon Lipkin reading his poetry about World War 2 in Moscow Central Writers' House, later they met in 1967 and married. Semyon Lipkin was a poet and translator.
Russian almanac Metropole, published abroad, rearranged a collection of young Soviet poets in 1979 to publish, but all writers in Soviet Union must first take permission in Communist government for every publication. The Communist government hadn't allowed them to do this, but Metropole was anyway published in US, and as a result two Soviet young writers, Viktor Yerofeyev and Evgeniy Popov, were expelled from the Soviet Writer's Union. Inna Lisnyanskaya, Semyon Lipkin and writer Vasily Aksyonov decided to support the young writers and left Soviet Writer's Union in sympathy with the young poets. The leaving of the Soviet Writer's Union resulted in the next: poets were banned to publish anything anymore in Soviet Union, banned to travel abroad. American writerRonald Meyer secretly sent their poetry over diplomatic dispatches abroad. Inna Lisnyanskaya said in an interview in 1990, that the prohibitions were even good for her poetic work, because she ceased to be forced to censor herself for Soviet publications, because she was not anymore writing for Soviet Union, but only for close friends. But Communist government continued to pressure her also to cease all her foreign publications, that Lisnyanskaya was partly forced to stop from publishing some of her poetry abroad.
1987
All restrictions were lifted from Inna Lisnyanskaya in 1987, her poetry was published in many Soviet magazines, she became major Soviet poet, her first Russian book of poetry, Poems, was printed in 1991, and Inna Lisnyanskaya was awarded with various prizes as Solzhenitsyn Prize and Russia's Poet Prize.
Collection of her poetry Without You was dedicated to her friend, co-worker, and husband, Semyon Lipkin, when Galina Lisnyanskaya has lost him in 2004. American writer Ronald Meyer, who often visited her in the village of Peredelkino and became friends, said about the book of poetry as a talented, remarkable work.
Russian PEN
Inna Lisnyanskaya was also one of the organizers of the Russian Pen Center.
, a Russian poet, Nobel laureate, said once in an interview for the magazine 'Russian Thought' that he was significantly touched by poetry written by Inna Lisnyanskaya and Semyon Lipkin. Inna Lisnyanskaya's poetry was once called by poet Elaine Feinstein as an echo of tradition of Anna Akhmatova's great poetry and a transcendence of particular language: ---- Naked thoughts live unembellished. That saying's a lie, you can't Twice and so forth, whatever it is. A thousandth time I enter the same river. And I see the same grey stone on the bottom, The same carp with its gristly fins... ---- A collection of Inna Lisnyanskaya's poetry was translated from Russian in English language by Daniel Weissbort as well as by Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.
