Margarita Aliger, whose biography is of genuine interest to fans of her work, is a famous Soviet poetess who was awarded the Stalin Prize of the second degree for the poem "Zoya" about the fearless feat of the Soviet girl Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya.
Childhood
A native of the city of Odessa, Margarita Aliger, whose biography we are considering, was born on October 7, 1915 in a Jewish family of small employees.
Mom was an ordinary housewife, father - a capable, comprehensively erudite person, in order to feed his family, he tried to earn by any means: he gave lessons, served in various desks, and was engaged in translations. Rita was his only and very beloved child. When the girl was 9 years old, her father died.
Metropolitan life
From early childhood, the girl was very fond of reading, preferring the works of Nekrasov and Pushkin, and made the first attempts to write poetic lines. The girl began to show her literary talent in her school years: for all holidays and significant events. After seven years of schooling, she continued her studies at a chemical college, worked at the factory at the same time, and was preparing to connect her life with chemistry. After two years, Margarita realized that the main thing in her life was poetry and literature. At 16, the girl left her studies and moved to Moscow, where her creative debut took place. Having failed examinations at the institute, the girl took a corner, got a job as a librarian at the OGIZ institute, and later in a factory circulation. In 1933 she began to be published in the magazine “Spark”, being a regular listener of his literary courses: the first publications were poems “Rain” and “Everyday Life”.
Margarita Aliger: creativity
In 1934, Margarita became a student of the Gorky Literary Institute , where she studied until 1937. Active publication of poems and public appearances began in 1935: such collections as “Year of Birth”, “Stones and Herbs”, and “Railway” saw the light of day. From 1934 to 1939, Margarita traveled a lot, visited Leningrad, Karelia, Central Asia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Belarus and Ukraine. Such trips contributed to the birth of new poems, which were readily printed by various publishers. To translation activities, bread at that time and stretching for many years, it was attracted by senior colleagues V. Lugovskaya and P. Antokolsky. Margarita's literary translations made it possible for the Russian reader to get acquainted with the work of the authors of various countries and to feel the originality and individuality of each of them.
First reward
Margarita Aliger was one of four poets (K. Simonov, E. Dolmatovsky, M. Matusovsky), who composed a poetic message to the heroic people of Spain during the years of the civil war in this country, which became the reason for Stalin's close attention and sympathy for the works of the poetess.
Like most contemporaries, in the 30s Aliger Margarita Iosifovna lived in the grip of existing myths about the Soviet Union as the creator of a renewed world, about the society of the Land of Soviets as the fairest and best, about Stalin - as a wise and great leader. The poetess joined the Komsomol, and since 1938 Margarita was a member of the Union of Writers of the USSR and a deputy of the district council of Krasnaya Presnya. In 1939, the poetess was awarded the first government award - the Order of the Badge of Honor.
Family life Margarita Aliger
In 1937, Margarita Aliger, whose biography is closely related to poetry and literature, created a family with the young composer Konstantin Makarov-Rakitin. At the initial stage of life together, family happiness came across a material life: even two scholarships were not enough for life. After a painful and prolonged illness at the age of one, the son of the spouses died, the husband volunteered for the front and was killed in the early days of the war. In memory of her husband, whose death Margarita was very upset, she dedicated the poem “With a bullet in my heart I live in the world” and “Music”. Konstantin managed to write several songs and piano pieces: vivid and melodic, to his wife’s verses.
From this marriage Margarita had a daughter, Tatyana, who later also linked her life with poetry. Died of blood cancer in 1974. The father of the second girl, Masha, was
Alexander Fadeev, who at that time was married to Angelina Stepanova, an actress of the Moscow Art Theater, and committed suicide in 1956. The youngest daughter, according to eyewitnesses - a very beautiful girl, started a family with the German poet Hans-Magnus Enzenserger, moved to him in Germany. Family life did not work out, Maria settled in London, wrote books and articles, translated from English, which she knew perfectly. Unexpectedly for everyone in 1991 committed suicide.
Margarita Aliger: wartime poems
From 1938 to 1940, Margarita Aliger printed three books of poems, planned new projects, but the war changed everything, with direct and direct participation in which Margarita considered her hard, daily work in wartime conditions, the maintenance of two children and life - the same as the lives of many millions of Soviet women, mothers of soldiers, widows and orphans.
With the outbreak of the war, Aliger Margarita Iosifovna worked as a
war correspondent in the besieged Leningrad in the newspaper Stalin Falcon, and on instructions from the editors she constantly traveled to different sectors of the front. Aliger devoted collections of her poems (“In Memory of the Brave”, “Poems and Poems”, “Lyrics”) to those who, standing at the forefront and risking death every minute, protect their country; because only thanks to these brave hearts, she and millions of Soviet citizens can live, work and believe in the future. In 1942, she wrote the poem "Zoya", telling about the exploit of Zoya Kosmodemyanskoy. To create this famous work, Margarita actively collected material, met people who knew Zoya: with her mother, teachers, comrades, partisans from the girl’s detachment, read her school notebooks, notebooks, and essays, which made it necessary to write about the feat of a Soviet girl. It is thanks to this work that the name of Margarita Aliger gained wide fame and became a symbol of patriotic propaganda.
For the poem "Zoya" Margarita Aliger decree signed by Stalin on March 21, 1943, was awarded the
Stalin Prize of the second degree. After 2 weeks, on April 3, Margarita wrote a letter in the newspapers in which the poet asked to transfer the prize received in the amount of 50,000 rubles for the needs of the Red Army and the strengthening of its weapons capabilities. However, this generous act is not mentioned anywhere. The success of Zoe's poem inspired Margarita to create a dramatic work with the same theme. So the play-drama "Tale of the Truth" was created, which was a huge success among theater audiences. After the death of Stalin, Margarita was declared by critics a "mediocre" poetess.
The last years of the poet's life
In 1955, the poetess Margarita Aliger took part in the creation of Literary Moscow, the so-called thaw almanac, was a member of the board of the Union of Writers of the RSFSR and the USSR.
In the 60-70s, the poet continued her literary work, her works were regularly published, Margarita traveled to many countries and wrote such poem cycles as “Japanese Notes”, “Two Meetings”, “Sad Spain”, “From a French Notebook”, "Italy of my soul", "Poems from afar", "Return to Chile." In the 70th year the first two-volume edition was published, in which poems and poems of Margarita Aliger were published, in 1984 - a three-volume collected works.
Margarita Aliger, whose biography is of genuine interest to the modern generation who wants to touch the military past, died on August 1, 1992 near her summer house as a result of an accident: she fell into a deep ditch. The poetess was buried in the cemetery in Peredelkino near her daughters.