Vera Inber


Vera Mikhailovna Inber, born Shpenzer, Ве́ра Миха́йловна И́нбер was a Russian-Soviet poet and writer.

Biography

Her father Moshe owned a scientific publishing house "Matematika". Moshe was cousin to the future socialist revolutionary Leon Trotsky. The nine-year-old Lev lived with Moshe and his wife Fanni in their Odessa apartment when Vera was a baby.
Vera briefly attended a History and Philology department in Odessa. Her first poems were published in 1910 in local newspapers. In 1910-1914 she lived in Paris and Switzerland; then she moved to Moscow. During the 1920s she worked as a journalist, writing prose, articles, and essays, and traveling across the country and abroad.
During World War II she lived in besieged Leningrad where her husband worked as the director at a medical institute. According to her New York Times obituary, she "wrote for the newspaper Leningradskaya Pravda and broadcast over Leningrad radio in efforts to keep up the morale and spirit of the hard‐pressed population." Much of her poetry and prose during those times is dedicated to the life and resistance of Soviet citizens. In 1946 she received an esteemed government award for her siege-time poem "Pulkovskij meridian". She was also awarded several medals.
She translated into Russian such Ukrainian poets, as Taras Shevchenko, and other foreign poets, such as Paul Éluard and Sándor Petőfi. Vera Inber dabbled in cabbala, although it had been forbidden by her elders.

English translations