Biography of Olga Fedorovna Bergholz. Olga Berggolts - biography, photo, personal life story of the poetess Message about Berggolts

The name of Olga Berggolts is known to every resident of our vast country, especially St. Petersburg residents. After all, she is not just a Russian poet, she is a living symbol of the siege of Leningrad. This strong woman had to go through a lot. Her short biography will be covered in the article.

Childhood and youth

Olga Fedorovna Berggolts was born in the late spring of 1910 in St. Petersburg. Her father Fyodor Khristoforovich was a surgeon. Olga also had a younger sister, Maria. After the revolution, the Bergholts family moved to Uglich, because there was unrest in Petrograd. The father of the family took part in hostilities. Mother Maria Timofeevna lived with her daughters for more than two years in the former Epiphany Monastery. Already in old age, Olga recalled with warmth those times and the anxiety with which they went back to Petrograd after her father’s return from the war.

The Bergholtsy lived on the very outskirts of Nevskaya Zastava. In 1926, Olga graduated from labor school. A year earlier, in one of the literary associations, I met Boris Kornilov, a poet and her future husband. She studied with him at the Institute of Art History.

It is with Kornilov that one of the tragedies of the poetess’s difficult life is connected. They got married in 1928, and a few months later the couple had a daughter, Irina. The girl died at the age of eight from heart disease. Boris himself was shot in February 1938 on trumped-up charges.

1930s

Since 1930 she studied at the philological department of Leningrad University. She went to practice in Vladikavkaz, where she spent half the summer and autumn working for the newspaper “Vlast Truda”.

In the same year, she divorced B. Kornilov and married Nikolai Berggolts, whose biography is filled with tragic events, and survived her second husband. He died in 1942 in Leningrad from hunger.

After graduating from the university, he was assigned to Kazakhstan, where he worked as a correspondent for the newspaper "Soviet Steppe". After returning to Leningrad, she worked at the Elektrosila newspaper until 1934.

In 1932, Olga and Nikolai had a daughter, Maya, but this motherhood also turned out to be tragic. The baby died a year later.

In 1934, the poetess was accepted into the Writers' Union, from which she was expelled several times and then reinstated again.

In December 1938, Olga Bergholz was arrested on charges of connections with enemies of the people. She was pregnant at the time of her arrest. But this did not stop her tormentors from carrying out torture. After all the beatings, the poetess gave birth to a stillborn child in the prison hospital.

Six months after her arrest, she was released and completely rehabilitated.

Years of the Great Patriotic War

In 1940 she joined the CPSU(b). The news of the start of the war found Olga in Leningrad. She immediately came to the local branch of the Writers' Union and offered her help. V. Ketlinskaya, the head of the department, sent Olga Berggolts to the radio. Throughout the blockade, the poetess’s quiet voice supported the victorious spirit in Leningraders, her poems inspired hope.

It was Bergholz who became the personification of the perseverance of the siege survivors. In November 1941, she and her ailing husband were being prepared for evacuation, but Molchanov died, and Olga decided to share the fate of the townspeople, remaining in Leningrad. Her best works were born here. "Leningrad Poem" by Olga Berggolts is dedicated to the defenders of the city and its courageous inhabitants.

At the end of 1942, she was able to visit Moscow. In those days, the poetess desperately missed her hometown and longed with all her heart to return. No amount of goodness in the form of a hot meal, a bath, etc. could stop her.

It was Olga Fedorovna Berggolts who told Leningraders in 1943 the good news about

In the summer of 1942, the poetess received After the end of the war, it was her words that were carved on the granite slab of the memorial cemetery: “... no one is forgotten and nothing is forgotten.”

last years of life

In 1949 she married for the third time. Olga’s chosen one was Georgy Makogonenko, a literary scholar and critic. In the post-war period, the poetess worked a lot and went on business trips. After a trip to Sevastopol, she wrote the tragedy “Loyalty.”

In 1951, Olga Berggolts was awarded the USSR State Prize. I greeted the death of I.V. Stalin with bitter verses.

In 1962, she divorced Makogonenko. The last years of my life were essentially spent alone. Only her sister Maria was nearby, who always helped with everything.

Death

She was buried at although it was initially planned that the coffin with the body would be taken to Piskarevskoye. Many townspeople were unable to say goodbye to their beloved poetess, since the obituary was published in the newspaper only on the day of the burial.

The authorities made sure that there were not many people at the coffin; they were afraid of the speeches, because they had caused so much harm to Bergholz. In the end, we achieved what we wanted. E. Serebrovskaya gave a speech, whom Olga could not stand for her meanness and constant denunciations of writers and poets. D. Granin, recalling the day of farewell to Bergholz, said that it was a cowardly funeral; instead of sadness and grateful memory, the poetess received only the anger of her ill-wishers.

Creation

The first poetic work was published in 1925. Initially, Olga Berggolts, whose biography is quite tragic, positioned herself as a children's poet. She received praise from K. Chukovsky.

The war years changed everything in her life. It was then that she found herself and followed the right creative path. Olga Berggolts, whose poems about the war gave hope and faith, became a symbol of invincibility.

Among her best works are “February Diary”, “Leningrad Poem”, “Day Stars”. After her death, the poetess's diaries were published, which are of great value and store many happy and painful memories.

Olga Berggolts is a famous Soviet poet, writer, journalist and columnist. Her work took place during difficult years in the history of our country. She began writing in the 1920s and 1930s, but became most famous for her poems on a military theme, which she composed while in besieged Leningrad. In addition, she has written a number of books written in prose, numerous essays, as well as diaries in which she talks about her life and also expresses her attitude towards Soviet power.

short biography

Olga Berggolts was born in 1910 in St. Petersburg into the family of a surgeon. At the age of 16 she graduated from labor school, and in 1925 she published her first poem. This is how her literary career began: she wrote lyrics, prose, worked in various publications, and wrote essays. The poetess was married twice: she divorced her first husband, the poet B. Kornilov, after some time (he was subsequently shot), and lived with her second until his death from starvation in besieged Leningrad. Olga Bergholz became a victim of political repression: she was arrested, kept in prison and even tortured.

Fortunately, the poetess was rehabilitated and got the opportunity to work in the newspaper. In addition to working in the besieged city, she made a trip to Sevastopol, to which she dedicated a series of poems. In the 1950s-1960s, her poems were published in separate collections and were also distributed in samizdat. The lyrics of the talented poetess received all-Union recognition. Olga Berggolts died in 1975 in Leningrad.

Early works

The author's first literary works were a poem dedicated to Lenin and a short story, which were published in a newspaper and magazine. The young girl became interested in fiction and joined the association of young authors, and also attended courses at the Institute of Arts. By 1930, Olga Berggolts was already an established author: she was published in the popular magazine “Chizh” and also published her own book.

She entered Leningrad University, but continued her literary career. The girl wrote not only poetry and prose, but also journalistic works. Thus, she devoted some essays to the construction of large national economic facilities in the country.

Creativity of the 1930s

After graduating from university, the young woman continued to work at the newspaper. She lived in Kazakhstan for some time, about which she wrote not only articles and essays, but also an entire book. A few years later, the poetess returned to her hometown, where she published several of her books, among them a poetry collection. Olga Berggolts, whose poems immediately brought her fame, became a popular and famous author from the mid-1930s. The topics of her lyrics were very diverse - from philosophical reflections on life to touching love poems.

During the war years

Olga Berggolts, whose biography is inextricably linked with the difficult war times, remained in besieged Leningrad, where she worked on the radio. At this time, her second husband died, to whom she dedicated a separate book. According to the poetess, this work was her most powerful composition. During these terrible years, she created her best examples of war lyrics. In 1942 she wrote the famous “Leningrad Poem”.

In it, the author recounted in poetic form the difficult days of the city residents waiting for bread. The poetess showed a terrible war landscape, the passage of a car with bread across a frozen bay, the grief and despair of mothers. Olga Berggolts, whose poems about Leningrad truthfully convey terrible pictures of hunger, despair and devastation, in her war works always emphasized the fortitude and courage of soldiers and ordinary residents.

In the poem “February Diary,” written in 1942, the idea is conveyed that just living in besieged Leningrad was a real feat. The author shows how each resident of the city was a single whole with ordinary soldiers who fought off enemies with weapons in their hands. The poetess shows the contrast between the terrible pictures of devastation and the fighting spirit of the population and army soldiers.

Post-war creativity

Berggolts took part in the creation of a radio film dedicated to the defense of Leningrad. It was her words that were engraved on the memorial monument where those who died during the terrible blockade were buried. For her literary merits, she received the medal “For the Defense of Leningrad.” Despite the fact that her work was criticized at one of the party plenums, the poetess’s books continued to be popular among the readership. After the war, she published several new books, among them a series of poems about Stalingrad.

At the same time, she wrote the play “They Lived in Leningrad,” which was staged in the theater. In the 1960-1970s, Bergholz’s works were distributed through samizdat, and her poetry collections were published: “The Knot”, “Memory” and others.

Confession

The poetess's work gained all-Union fame. A street and a square in St. Petersburg were named after her, memorial plaques were installed in her memory and a museum was opened. A monument was erected to her in the same city.

Performances dedicated to her difficult fate were staged on theater stages. Separately, it should be said about the publication of her diaries, which were sent to the archives after the death of the poetess. The first complete edition was published in 2015. In his memoirs, Bergholz criticizes the Soviet government for military defeats and the capture of many cities by enemies.

Today, May 16, marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Russian writer and poetess Olga Feodorovna Berggolts.

Russian writer, poetess Olga Fedorovna Berggolts was born on May 16 (old style - May 3) 1910 in St. Petersburg in the family of a doctor. The family lived on the working-class outskirts of St. Petersburg in the Nevskaya Zastava area, where the future poetess spent her childhood.

In the 1920s Olga Berggolts studied at a labor school. Her first poems were published in 1924 in the factory wall newspaper, and a year later Olga Berggolts joined the Smena literary youth group.

In 1926, she became a student at the Higher State Courses in Art History at the Institute of Art History, and a few years later she was transferred to Leningrad University.

In 1930, Berggolts graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Leningrad University and, as assigned, went to Kazakhstan, where she began working as a traveling correspondent for the newspaper "Soviet Steppe", which she described in her book "Deep Places" (1932).

Returning to Leningrad, Olga Berggolts worked for three years as an editor in the large circulation of the Elektrosila plant. Later she worked for the newspaper Literary Leningrad.

In 1932-1935. The first collections of Olga Berggolts were published, with which her fame as a poet began. Among her works of that time are poems, poems, short stories, novellas, plays, journalism: the story "Uglich" (1932), a collection of essays written in Kazakhstan "Glubinka" (1932), a collection of lyrics "Poems" (1934), a story "Journalists " (1934), collection of stories "Night in the New World" (1935), story "Grains" (1935), collection "Book of Songs" (1936).

In December 1938, Olga Berggolts was arrested, accused of “being an active participant in a counter-revolutionary terrorist organization that was preparing terrorist acts against Zhdanov and Voroshilov” (from the Case). She spent six months in prison, where as a result of beatings she gave birth to a stillborn child. In July 1939 she was released “for lack of proof of the crime.”

Creative maturity came to Bergholz during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. During the siege of Leningrad, Olga Berggolts was in a city besieged by the Nazis. In November 1941, she and her seriously ill husband were supposed to be evacuated from Leningrad, but her husband died and Olga Fedorovna remained in the city.

Remaining in besieged Leningrad, she worked at the Radio House throughout the days of the siege, conducting radio broadcasts almost daily, which were later included in her book “Leningrad Speaks.” During these days, Bergholz became a truly national poet, sharing with the Leningraders all the horrors of the “mortal time”, instilling hope in them with her poems.

Olga Berggolts was awarded the Order of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor and medals.

Having survived the siege of Leningrad, Berggolts dedicated the works “February Diary”, “Leningrad Poem” (1942), “Leningrad Notebook” (1942; collection), “In Memory of the Defenders” (1944), the play “They Lived in Leningrad” (written by together with Georgy Makogonenko in 1944 and staged at the Alexander Tairov Theater), “Your Way” (1945), the film script “Leningrad Symphony” (1945; together with Makogonenko), the play “On Our Land” (1947).

In 1950, she wrote a heroic-romantic poem about the Petrograd workers who built the city-commune “Pervorossiysk” in Altai in 1918, for which she was awarded the USSR State Prize in 1951.

After a business trip to liberated Sevastopol, Olga Berggolts created the tragedy “Loyalty” (1954). In 1959, her autobiographical book of lyrical prose “Day Stars” was published, on which a film of the same name was made in 1968.

In the 1960s, her poetry collections “The Knot” and “Test” were published; in the 1970s. - “Loyalty”, “Memory”.

The diaries that the poetess kept for many years did not see the light of day during her lifetime; the archive was confiscated by the authorities after her death. Fragments of diaries and some poems appeared in 1980 in the Israeli magazine “Time and We.” Most of Bergholtz's legacy, which was not published in Russia, was included in the third volume of her collected works, published in 1990.

The poetess's personal life did not work out. Her first husband, Boris Kornilov, lived with her for no more than two years; they divorced in 1928 (“they didn’t get along”) and Olga married Nikolai Molchanov, with whom she studied at the university. Nikolai Molchanov fell ill with epilepsy and died in 1942.

Olga Berggolts had to endure more than one tragedy: her daughters died one after another: in 1933 - the youngest Maya, and three years later - the eldest Irina. Bergholz lost her third child in prison. Along with his death, Olga Fedorovna lost the ability to be a mother.

The third husband, St. Petersburg philologist Georgy Makogonenko, left Berggolts in 1959.

The last sixteen years have surrounded the poetess, but have not extinguished her gift of song. In the last year of her life she said: “I live through pain, I write through pain...”

Olga Fedorovna died on November 13, 1975 in Leningrad and was buried, contrary to her wishes, not at the Piskarevskoye cemetery, but on the Literary Bridges of the Volkovskoye cemetery.

A street in the Nevsky district of St. Petersburg is named after Olga Berggolts. At 7 Rubinshteina Street, where she lived, a memorial plaque was unveiled. Another bronze bas-relief of her memory is installed at the entrance to the Radio House.

The lines of Olga Berggolts are carved on the granite stele of the Piskarevsky Memorial Cemetery: “No one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten.”

On October 3, 1994, Russian President Boris Yeltsin issued a decree “On perpetuating the memory of O. F. Berggolts,” according to which a monument to the poetess was to be erected on her grave in the first half of 1995, but Olga Berggolts’ sister did not want to change anything at the grave.
And only on May 3, 2005, on the Literary Bridge of the Volkovsky Cemetery, on the grave of the poetess, a sculptural composition in granite and bronze was installed, which was crowned by a window outline resembling a four-pointed cross (the work of St. Petersburg sculptor Vladimir Gorevoy).

In the spring of 2010, the publishing house "Azbuka" published the collection "Olga. The Forbidden Diary", dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the poet Olga Berggolts. The collection includes prison and blockade diaries collected together for the first time, excerpts from the never-finished second part of the book “Day Stars”, previously unpublished letters to his father, who was expelled by the authorities from Leningrad during the blockade, rare photographs and documents from the archives of Moscow and St. Petersburg.

In addition to Bergholtz's diaries from 1939-1949, letters, photographs and documents, the book includes materials from the Bergholtz investigative case from 1938-1939. from the FSB archives. These materials were considered lost and became available only in the fall of 2009.

The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources.

Name: Olga Berggolts

Age: 65 years old

Place of Birth: Saint Petersburg

A place of death: Leningrad, Russia

Activity: poetess, novelist, journalist

Family status: was married

Olga Berggolts - biography

“Leningrad speaks! The poetess Olga Berggolts is at the microphone...” Thousands of Leningraders waited for these words every day. They knew: if Olga was on air, it meant the city had not given up.

Olga Berggolts - childhood

Mom raised Olya and Masha as Turgenev girls. She instilled in them a love of poetry and hired governesses. She dreamed that her girls would enter the Institute of Noble Maidens. However, the revolution destroyed all plans. The husband went to fight, and the family moved from Petrograd to Uglich - it was safer there. The carefree life is over.

The love of poetry is all that Olga has left from her happy childhood. The girl began to write poetry early. She timidly wrote them down in her diary, and then she dared to take them to the newspaper editorial office. In 1925, “The Red Weaver” published the first poem in its biography by the young author Olga Berggolts. And a year later Korney Chukovsky himself declared: “She will become a real poetess!”

Olga Berggolts - biography of personal life

Soon, 18-year-old Olga had a devoted listener - the poet Boris Kornilov. The girl married him, and nine months later, in 1928, she gave birth to a daughter, Irochka. The child inspired Bergholz so much that she began writing poetry for children.

The marriage was a mistake - Olga realized this when she met Nikolai Molchanov. After a series of scandals, Bergholz broke up with her first husband and married Nikolai. How she loved him! No one had ever treated her so tenderly and forgivingly. Only he could turn a blind eye to her fleeting affairs with colleagues, because he knew that she would return to the bosom of the family. The husband also supported Olga in the literary field. Together with her, he rejoiced at the successes - the publication in the 1930s of the collection of stories “Night in the New World”, a collection of poems and essays.

In 1932, the couple had a daughter, Maya. Nikolai and Olga doted on the baby. They enjoyed the happy time, as if sensing that it would soon end.

Olga Berggolts - a terrible loss

When Maya was one year old, she passed away. The parents were inconsolable, especially Olga. And three years later, the eldest daughter Irochka died of a heart defect. She was seven years old. The girl walked away heavily, holding her mother’s hand. Olga remembered these minutes for the rest of her life. After losing her daughters, she was overcome with guilt: she realized how little warmth and love she had given them. Kolya helped as best he could - he was there all the time, reassuring: “We will definitely have more children!” I didn’t deceive you - a year later Olga was pregnant again.

On December 13, 1938, Bergholz was going about her daily routine when they came for her. “You are accused of having connections with enemies of the people and of preparing terrorist attacks,” the poetess was dumbfounded. It turned out that Olga was slandered under torture by a family friend. A woman, six months pregnant, was arrested with the sole purpose of beating the “truth” out of her. They started with intimidation, then moved on to beatings. They hit her in the stomach, and Olga, gritting her teeth, remained silent...

Returning to the cell after another beating, she realized: the child was no more. She was denied medical help, and Bergholz carried the dead fetus for almost two months. They took pity only when they found her on the floor in a pool of blood. “You, my dear, barely survived; it was a miracle that no infection occurred,” the doctors said. They also warned that she would no longer be able to have children.

Having failed to obtain a confession from the poetess, she was released in July 1939. In her diary, Olga wrote: “They took out the soul, dug into it with stinking fingers, spat on it, shit on it, then put it back and said: “Live!” But she didn’t know how to live further...

Olga was trampled. The only person who stayed nearby was Nikolai. He did not betray her, even when he was asked to give up his wife, an enemy of the people. He put his party card on the table and said: “This is not like a man.”

Surprisingly, the war that began in 1941 helped Bergholz survive. Of course, at first there was fear. “I know that the Germans will arrive again soon. My legs are shaking, my hands are freezing..." Olga wrote in her diary. But then I realized: her city needs her. The poetess went to the radio committee and offered help. She was seated at the microphone, and every day she got in touch with Leningraders. “What can the enemy do? Destroy and kill. And that's all. And I can love...” - her voice sounded from radios in thousands of apartments. She was the hope that Leningrad would survive. There was not a day when Olga did not appear at the microphone. Even when my beloved husband died.

Nikolai suffered from a severe form of epilepsy acquired during military service. Despite this, he went to the front again. He was brought back with dystrophy, and soon the man died of starvation. Olga could not go to the funeral: she simply did not have the strength. Bergholz herself began to swell from hunger. Her stomach was swollen, which the woman mistakenly mistook for pregnancy. Alas, the miracle did not happen.

She began to write, pouring out all her pain and despair onto paper. In 1942, her best poems about those who defended their homeland were published - “Leningrad Poem” and “February Diary”. And on January 18, 1943, it was Olga Berggolts who informed the Leningraders that the blockade ring had been broken.

“No one is forgotten and nothing is forgotten” - the words of the poetess were carved after the war on the granite wall of the Piskarevsky cemetery. Bergholz herself survived. She finished the war with the medal “For the Defense of Leningrad” and hoped that what awaited her was, if not a happy, but at least a calm life.

A colleague, an employee of the radio committee, Georgy Makogonenko, helped me come to my senses after the death of my husband. He brought her back to life, and she married him. In fact, it was a deception - in fact, Olga continued to love her Kolya...

The post-war period did not bring peace: the poetess was accused of being friends with the disgraced Akhmatova, and was reproached for having too much bitterness and suffering in her war poems. The book “Leningrad Speaks,” published after the war, was removed from libraries. Olga was summoned for interrogation more than once, so in order not to attract the attention of the authorities, she hid her manuscripts and diaries. And she always carried a toothbrush and spare stockings in her purse - she understood that she could be arrested at any moment.

When the thaw came, it became easier. Olga Berggolts's poetry and prose began to be published again. In 1952, a series of poems about Stalingrad was published, and in 1960, “Day Stars”. Everything seemed to be getting better, but it was an illusion. The Thaw ended, and the censors came again, and Bergholz came under the radar of the authorities.

To forget herself, she started drinking. Only in a foggy state could her brain and soul rest. Georgy, despite the fact that he loved his wife, could not allow a drinking woman with a bad reputation to be next to him. Divorce was inevitable.

Olga Berggolts - dreams of death

“My life is over,” this thought, like an alarm bell, sounded in Olga’s head. She wanted to commit suicide, but was afraid of hurting her mother. She and her daughter Masha were there all the time and supported as best they could. And then Bergholz decided to destroy herself slowly. She started drinking again - she knew that with one kidney she wouldn’t last long with this lifestyle. More and more often, the poetess was taken away by ambulance, and the doctors kept repeating that one day they would not have time to save her. And she only dreamed about this...

It all happened on November 13, 1975. Olga Fedorovna was 65 years old. The obituary in the newspaper was published only on the day of the funeral, so many townspeople simply did not have time to see off the poetess on her final journey. During her lifetime, Bergholz asked to be buried at the Piskarevskoye cemetery. Hundreds of thousands of dead Leningraders rested there, her Kolenka lay there... But even after her death, the authorities did not want to leave her alone - they did as they saw fit. Olga Berggolts was buried on the Literatorskie bridge of the Volkovsky cemetery.

Olga Fedorovna Berggolts. Born on May 3 (16), 1910 in St. Petersburg - died on November 13, 1975 in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). Russian Soviet poetess, prose writer, playwright, journalist. Winner of the Stalin Prize (1951). One of the symbols of besieged Leningrad. Author of the lines “No one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten.”

Olga Berggolts was born on May 3 (16 according to the new style) 1910 in St. Petersburg.

On her father's side she had German-Swedish roots.

Father - Fyodor Khristoforovich Berggolts (1885-1948), a descendant of a military man who was taken prisoner, a surgeon by profession, a graduate of the University of Dorpat.

Mother - Maria Timofeevna Berggolts (nee Grustilina; 1884-1957).

Younger sister - (1912-2003), actress, theater figure.

Olga was called Lyalya in the family, and her sister Maria was called Musya. They were raised by their mother, who adored poetry and passed on this love to her daughters. Olga spent her childhood in a two-story house on Nevskaya Zastava, in the usual way of life for an intelligent family of those years - a nanny, a governess, the love and care of her parents.

During World War I, my father went to the front as a field surgeon. In 1918, famine and devastation brought Maria Timofeevna and her daughters to Uglich, where they lived in one of the cells of the Epiphany Monastery.

In 1921, my father returned, having gone through two wars. And they returned to Nevskaya Zastava. Parental dreams of an institute for noble maidens and Lyalya’s medical education disappeared without a trace, and Olga became a student of the 117th labor school, and in 1924 she was already a pioneer, turning from a devout, intelligent girl into a proletarian activist, who soon joined the Komsomol.

The first poem of fourteen-year-old Olga Berggolts - “Lenin” - was published by the factory wall newspaper of the Red Weaver plant on September 27, 1925, where her father, Dr. Berggolts, then worked in an outpatient clinic. And her first story, “The Enchanted Path,” appeared in the magazine “Red Tie.”

A year later, her poem “Song of the Banner” was published by Lenin Sparks, and Olga, who was in her final year of nine years, joined the literary youth association “Smena” at the Leningrad Association of Proletarian Writers.

In 1926, she received praise, who noted at a meeting of the union of poets that Olga would certainly make a real poet.

She studied at the Higher Courses at the Institute of Art History, where she was taught by teachers such as Tynyanov, Eikhenbaum, Shklovsky, and Bagritsky, Mayakovsky, and Utkin spoke.

Since 1930, she worked in children's literature, published in the magazine "Chizh", and published her first book - "Winter-Summer-Parrot".

Then she entered the philological faculty of Leningrad University. Pre-graduation practice took place in Vladikavkaz in the summer - autumn of 1930 in the newspaper “Power of Labor”. Covered the construction of a number of national economic facilities, in particular, the Gizeldon hydroelectric station.

After graduating from the university in 1930, she left for Kazakhstan, working as a correspondent for the newspaper “Soviet Steppe”, which she described in the book “Glubinka” (1932). Returning to Leningrad, she worked as an editor in the newspaper of the Elektrosila plant (1931-1934). In 1933-1935, books were published: essays “Years of Assault”, a collection of stories “Night in the New World”, the first “adult book of poetry” - the collection “Poems”, with which Bergholz’s poetic fame began.

In 1934 she was admitted to the Union of Soviet Writers, from which she was expelled on May 16, 1937. She was reinstated again in July 1938, and then, due to her arrest, she was expelled again.

Arrests of Olga Berggolts

At the beginning of 1937, Berggolts was involved in the “Averbakh case,” in which she was a witness. During a meeting of the party committee of the Elektrosila plant named after S. M. Kirov on May 29, 1937, she explained: “The charges that are brought against me are very serious charges. People at the factory had good opinions about me. As for my connection with Averbakh, I met him as the head of the Union of Soviet Writers. I was a member of the SSP even earlier, then I was expelled. Libedinsky introduced me to Averbakh. Averbakh was at that time in the position of leader and enjoyed enormous authority. Everyone was on very good terms with him. At that time, the Young Guard wanted to involve me in literary work, and Averbakh wanted to keep me in the Writers' Union, considering me indispensable in the field of children's literature... I never had ideological ties with him. I did not receive instructions from him and did not have a close relationship with him... In 1931, Averbakh wanted me to marry him, he was in love with me. I refused. He was not my husband. I then wrote to my husband in Kazakhstan asking him to leave, and then I told Averbakh not to rely on me. The husband arrived, and for this he was expelled from the Komsomol. In 1932, the husband wrote a statement to the RAPP party organization, calling Averbakh a political adventurer and literary rogue. I was scared of this because... Averbakh was at the height of his position at that time, but there was no conflict then.”

The first husband, Boris Kornilov, was shot on February 21, 1938 in Leningrad. By mid-1938, all charges against Olga Berggolts were dropped.

However, six months later - on December 13, 1938 - Olga Berggolts was arrested again on charges of “in connection with enemies of the people”, as well as as a participant in a counter-revolutionary conspiracy against Voroshilov and Zhdanov. She was involved in the case of the “Literary Group”, which was falsified by former employees of the KGB in the Kirov region.

Olga Berggolts was kept in prison for 171 days, her health was completely undermined. Despite this, Bergholz remained steadfast and pleaded not guilty.

Under torture, testimony against the poetess was extracted from her comrades Igor Franceschi and Leonid Dyakonov; she had friendly relations with the latter while working in the Kazakh newspaper “Soviet Steppe”. But the first testimony at the investigation into the case of the “literary group” against L. Dyakonov, O. Berggolts and other writers was given by the Chairman of the Vyatka branch of the Union of Soviet Writers Andrei Aldan-Semyonov, who was the first among those arrested.

On July 3, 1939, Olga Fedorovna Berggolts was released and completely rehabilitated. Soon after her release, she recalled: “They took out my soul, dug into it with stinking fingers, spat on it, shit on it, then put it back in and said: live!”

In February 1940 she joined the ranks of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks).

Olga Berggolts during the siege of Leningrad

During the Great Patriotic War, Olga remained in besieged Leningrad. Since August 1941 she worked on the radio, almost daily appealing to the courage of the city residents.

During the war years, she, like thousands of Leningraders, steadfastly survived the blockade and was able to express her feelings and those of many in her poems.

Comrade, we have had bitter days,
Unprecedented troubles threaten
But you and I are not forgotten, not alone, -
And this is already a victory.

Olga Berggolts spoke on the radio almost every day, addressing residents of the besieged city. Her quiet melodious voice, in which pain, compassion and heroism of the defenders of Leningrad merged, spoke the truth about the city, without smoothing over or decorating anything. And the whole country knew that Leningrad continued to live and fight even in the ring of the blockade. Love for the Motherland and the ability to overshadow another is what helped us survive and survive.

I'm talking to you amid the whistling of shells,
illuminated with a gloomy glow.
I'm talking to you from Leningrad,
my country, sad country...

Olga Berggolts not only performed on the radio, often, together with a team of artists, she went to the front, which was very close to the city, and read her poems to the soldiers defending Leningrad.

This is the front today. Hundred meters
Before the one who prepares death for me.
But today it's quiet. Even the wind
Not at all. It's easy to sound the string.
I know there is no death: it won’t creep up,
She won’t strangle you slowly, -
Life will just sparkle and end,
Like a song full of strings.

Olga Berggolts herself later said: “We firmly decided from the first days of the war that we would remain in Leningrad, no matter how difficult its fate would be. I had to face the challenge head on. I realized: my time has come when I can give everything to the Motherland - my work, my poetry. After all, we lived for something all the previous years.”

At this time, Bergholz created her best poems dedicated to the defenders of Leningrad: “February Diary” (1942), “Leningrad Poem” (1942).

The poetess’s father, Fyodor Berggolts, was formally “exiled” from besieged Leningrad by the NKVD to Minusinsk (Krasnoyarsk Territory) in March 1942 for refusing to become an informant.

On January 27, 1945, the radio film “900 Days” was released, which used various fragments of sound recordings (including a metronome, excerpts from the Seventh Symphony, alarm announcements, people’s voices) combined into one recording. Olga Berggolts, among others, worked on this radio film and read poetry there.

Despite all her merits, at the end of May 1945, at the Tenth Plenum of the USSR Writers' Union, she was criticized for reflecting in her poems the theme of suffering associated with the countless disasters of the citizens of the besieged city. O. Berggolts responded to criticism with a verse:

And even for those who would like to smooth things over
in the mirrored timid memory of people,
I won’t let you forget how the Leningrader fell
on the yellow snow of deserted squares.

After the war, on the granite stele of the Piskarevsky Memorial Cemetery, where 470,000 Leningraders who died during the Leningrad Siege and in battles defending the city rest, her words were carved:

Leningraders lie here.
Here the townspeople are men, women, children.
Next to them are Red Army soldiers.
With all my life
They protected you, Leningrad,
The cradle of the revolution.
We cannot list their noble names here,
There are so many of them under the eternal protection of granite.
But know, he who listens to these stones:
No one is forgotten and nothing is forgotten.

After the war, Bergholtz published a book, “Leningrad Speaks,” about working on the radio during the war. Olga also wrote the play “They Lived in Leningrad,” staged at the A. Tairov Theater.

In 1948, “Favorites” was published in Moscow, 10 years later - Collected Works in two volumes.

In 1952, a series of poems about Stalingrad was published. After a business trip to liberated Sevastopol, she created the tragedy “Loyalty” (1954). A new stage in Bergholtz’s work was the prose book “Day Stars” (1959), which allows one to understand and feel the “biography of the century”, the fate of a generation.

My heart bleeds...
Our beloved, our dear!
Grabbing your headboard,
The Motherland is crying over You.

In other poems, Bergholz spoke about the death of Stalin:

Oh, weren't your trumpets crying?
Four nights, four days
From the fifth of March in the Hall of Columns
Over the ashes that shredded me during my life... (“Five addresses to tragedy”).

In the mid-1950s and early 1960s, several of Bergholz's poems were distributed in samizdat. Her poetry collections “The Knot” and “Test” were published in the 1960s, and “Loyalty” and “Memory” in the 1970s.

In 1960 the book “Day Stars” was published.

The last new book published was the collection of poems “Memory,” published in 1972 in Moscow.

Olga Berggolts died in Leningrad on November 13, 1975. She was buried on the Literatorskie Mostki of the Volkovskoye Cemetery.

The monument at the grave of the poetess appeared only in 2005.

A street in the Nevsky district and a square in the courtyard of house No. 20 on the Chernaya Rechka embankment in the Primorsky district of St. Petersburg are named after Olga Berggolts. A street in the center of Uglich is also named after Olga Berggolts.

Memorial plaques to Olga Berggolts are installed on the building of the former school in the Epiphany Monastery of Uglich, where she studied from 1918 to 1921. and on Rubinshteina Street, 7, where she lived. Another bronze bas-relief of her memory is installed at the entrance to the Radio House. A monument to Olga Berggolts was also erected in the courtyard of the Leningrad Regional College of Culture and Art on Gorokhovaya, 57-a: where there was a hospital during the Great Patriotic War.

In 1994, Olga Berggolts was awarded the title “Honorary Citizen of St. Petersburg.”

On January 17, 2013, on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the breaking of the siege of Leningrad in St. Petersburg, the Olga Berggolts Museum was opened at school No. 340 in the Nevsky district. The exhibition consists of four exhibition sections - “Olga Berggolts’s Room”, “Siege Room”, “Place of Memory” and “History of the Neighborhood and School”.

To mark the 100th anniversary of the poetess’s birth, in 2010, the St. Petersburg theater “Baltic House” staged the play “Olga. Forbidden Diary" (directed by Igor Konyaev, starring Era Ziganshina).

On May 16, 2015, on the 105th anniversary of the poet’s birth, a monument to Olga Berggolts was unveiled in the Palevsky Garden on the Nevsky Side of St. Petersburg.

The diaries that the poetess kept for many years were not published during her lifetime. After the death of Olga Berggolts, her archive was confiscated by the authorities and placed in a special storage facility. Fragments of diaries and some poems appeared in 1980 in the Israeli magazine Time and We. Most of Bergholtz's legacy, which was not published in Russia, was included in the 3rd volume of her collected works (1990). Excerpts from the diaries about the poetess’s arrival in the village of Staroye Rakhino were published in the magazine “Znamya” in 1991. In 2015, the first complete edition of Olga Berggolts' diaries was announced. The preparation of the publication was carried out by the team of the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI), which has kept the poetess’s personal collection since 1975.

Personal life of Olga Berggolts:

She was married three times.

First husband- poet Boris Kornilov. We met in 1925 at the literary association of working youth “Smena”. She was 18 years old. In 1928 they got married.

On October 13, 1928, the couple had a daughter, Irina, who died on March 14, 1936 at the age of 7 (due to a heart complication - decompensated heart disease - after a severe sore throat).

They divorced in 1930.

The first husband, Boris Kornilov, was shot on February 21, 1938 in Leningrad. In 1968, Olga unveiled a monument to Boris Kornilov in the poet’s homeland in the city of Semenov.

Olga Berggolts and Boris Kornilov. More than love

Second husband- Nikolai Molchanov, literary critic, her classmate.

Shortly after the wedding, she dedicated the following lines to her second husband:

I got you from life,
like a spark from flint,
so as not to part, so as not to be separated
you always loved me.
Forgive me for being like this
what year in a row
I fall in love, then I wander,
only people say...

In 1932, Olga gave birth to a daughter, Maya, but a year later the girl died.

At the beginning of 1937, Bergholz was arrested while she was heavily pregnant. She was taken to the hospital, where she lost her child.

In December 1938, Olga Berggolts was arrested again when she was heavily pregnant. After beatings and torture, Olga gave birth to a stillborn child right in prison.

Nikolai Molchanov died of hunger on January 29, 1942. Despite his disability, he went to build fortifications on the Luga line. His combat description included the phrase: “Capable of self-sacrifice.”

The husband was ill for a long time, exhausted from adversity and malnutrition, and melted before our eyes. The leadership of the Radio Committee decided to help Olga Berggolts and her husband evacuate to the mainland. Deadlines were set, but every time something fell through: either the need arose for her poems, or for participation in programs, and she postponed her departure.

On the death of her second husband she wrote poetry:

It was day like day.
A friend came to see me
without crying, she told me that yesterday
I buried my only friend,
and we were silent with her until the morning.
What words could I find?
I, too, am a Leningrad widow.
We ate the bread that was put aside for the day,
The two of them wrapped themselves in one scarf,
and it became quiet and quiet in Leningrad,
One, knocking, worked with a metronome.

In 1965, Olga Berggolts dedicated, in her own opinion, the best poetic book, “The Knot,” to Molchanov. Until her death, there was a portrait of Nikolai Molchanov on Olga Berggolts’s night table.

Third husband- Georgy Makogonenko, employee of the Leningrad Radio Committee, professor of the Department of Russian Literature of Leningrad State University. For a long time he was secretly in love with Olga. They were married from 1949 to 1962.

Olga later described her last love in the poem “Indian Summer.” However, the third marriage quickly broke up - the husband left for another woman.

In 1952, she was treated for alcohol addiction in a psychiatric hospital.

Bibliography of Olga Berggolts:

1944 - “Leningrad Diary”
1946 - “Leningrad Speaks”
1954 - “Selected”
1955 - “Lyrics”
1960 - “Day Stars”
1964 - “Day Stars”
1967 - Selected works in 2 volumes
1967 - “Day Stars”
1970 - “Loyalty”
1971 - “Day Stars”
1976 - “Leningrad poem. Poems. Poems"
1975 - “Day Stars”
1978 - “Day Stars”
1985 - “The Voice”
2000 - “Day Stars”

Filmography of Olga Berggolts:

Screen adaptations of works by Olga Berggolts:

1966 - “Day Stars” (dir. Igor Talankin)
1967 - “First Russians” (dir. Evgeny Shiffers)

Awards and prizes of Olga Berggolts:

Stalin Prize of the third degree (1951) for the poem “Pervorossiysk” (1950)
Order of Lenin (28.10.1967)
Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1960)
medal "For the Defense of Leningrad" (1943)
Medal "For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945"
Honorary Citizen of St. Petersburg (1994)