The name of Olga Bergholz is known to every resident of our vast country, especially St. Petersburg. After all, she is not just a Russian poet, she is a living symbol of the blockade of Leningrad. This strong woman had to go through a lot. Her brief biography will be covered in the article.
Childhood and youth
Bergholz Olga Fedorovna was born in the late spring of 1910 in St. Petersburg. Her father Fedor Khristoforovich was a surgeon. Olga also had a younger sister, Maria. After the revolution, the Berggoltse family moved to Uglich, because in Petrograd it was restless. The father of the family participated in the hostilities. Mother Maria Timofeevna lived with her daughters for more than two years in the former Epiphany monastery. Already in old age, Olga with warmth remembered those times and the anxiety with which they were leaving back to Petrograd after her father returned from the war.
Bergholtsy lived on the very outskirts of the Neva outpost. In 1926, Olga graduated from a labor school. The year before, in one of the literary associations I met Boris Kornilov, a poet and her future husband. Together with him, she studied at the Institute of Art History.
It is with Kornilov that one of the tragedies of the poet’s difficult life is connected. In 1928 they got married, a few months later the daughter Irina was born to the couple. 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 faculty of Leningrad University. I went to practice in Vladikavkaz, where I spent half of the summer and autumn, working in the newspaper "Power of Labor".
In the same year, she divorced B. Kornilov and married Nikolai Molchanov. Olga Berggolz, whose biography is filled with tragic events, survived her second husband. He died in 1942 in Leningrad from starvation.
After graduating from the university, he is sent to Kazakhstan by distribution, where he works in the newspaper Sovetskaya Steppe as a correspondent. After returning to Leningrad until 1934 she worked in the Electrosila newspaper.
In 1932, Olga and Nikolai had a daughter, Maya, but this motherhood was tragic. The baby died a year later.
In 1934, the poetess was accepted into the Writers' Union, from where she was expelled several times, and then restored again.
In December 1938, Olga Berggolz was arrested on charges of having ties to enemies of the people. At the time of detention she was pregnant. But this did not stop her torturers from conducting torture. After all the beatings, the poet in the prison hospital gave birth to a dead child.
Six months after the arrest, she was released and completely rehabilitated.
Years of World War II
In 1940 she joined the CPSU (b). The news of the beginning 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 Berggolz to the radio. Throughout the blockade, the poetess' quiet voice supported the victorious spirit in Leningraders, her poems inspired hope.
It was Berggolz who became the personification of the resistance of the blockade. In November 1941, she and her ill husband were being prepared for evacuation, but Molchanov died, and Olga decided to share the fate of the townspeople, remaining in Leningrad. Here her best works were born. The "Leningrad poem" by Olga Berggolz 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 wholeheartedly sought back. No goodness in the form of hot food, bath and other things could stop her.
It was Bergholz Olga Fedorovna who told the Leningrad people in 1943 the good news about the breaking of the blockade.
In the summer of 1942, the poetess received the medal "For the Defense of Leningrad." After 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 a third time. The chosen one of Olga was George Makogonenko, literary critic and critic. In the post-war period, the poetess worked a lot, went on business trips. After a trip to Sevastopol, she wrote the tragedy "Fidelity."
In 1951, Berggoltz Olga was awarded the USSR State Prize. Bitter verses met the death of I.V. Stalin.
In 1962, she divorced Makogonenko. The last years of life, in fact, passed in solitude. Nearby was only her sister Maria, who helped in everything and always.
Death
Death overtook the poetess on November 13, 1975. Berggoltz passed away at the age of 65.
She was buried at the Volkovsky cemetery, although it was originally planned that the coffin with the body would be taken to Piskarevskoye. Many citizens did not manage 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 weren’t a lot of people at the tomb, they were afraid of speeches, because they caused so much evil Berggolz. As a result, they achieved what they wanted. A speech was made by E. Serebrovskaya, which Olga could not stand for meanness and constant denunciations of writers and poets. D. Granin, recalling the day of farewell to Berggolz, said that it was a cowardly funeral, instead of sadness and grateful memory, the poetess got only the anger of her ill-wishers.
Creation
The first poetic work was published in 1925. Initially, Olga Berggolz, whose biography is rather 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 went on the right creative path. Olga Berggolz, whose verses about the war gave hope and faith, became a symbol of invincibility.
Among her best works are “February Diary”, “Leningrad Poem”, “Day Stars”. After death, the poetess's diaries were published, which are of great value and hold many happy and painful memories.