Konstantin Simonov

As a teenager, Kiril believed in the new Soviet society, but that was shaken when his stepfather was arrested and he and his mother were expelled from their home. After six months Ivanishchev was released. In 1931 his family moved to Moscow where he completed a course in the factory workshop school of precision engineering and worked in a factory until 1935.

In 1935, in the Leningrad home of his librarian aunt Sofia Obolenskaya, he wrote his first poem. In 1935 most of the remaining Obolensky family in Leningrad, including Kiril’s aunt, were deported to Orenburg There she and her sister were arrested; both died in prison in 1937. His first poems were published in journals in 1936. He went to the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute in 1938 and entered the Moscow Institute of History, Philosophy and Literature, but was sent to take a course for war correspondents in the military-political academy, and obtained the service rank of quartermaster of the second rank.. He was sent as a war correspondent to cover the campaign in Mongolia. He returned to the Moscow Institute in 1939. By 1940 he had changed his name to Konstantin and established himself as both poet and dramatist. As a war correspondent he spent time on the fronts in Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Poland and Germany. At the beginning of World War II he was posted in the army and worked on the newspaper Red Star. He became a battalion commissar in 1942. Also in 1942, he wrote "Wait For Me". It won the hearts of the soldiers in the trenches who memorized it and sent it home in letters. It made Konstantin Simonov world famous. In 1943 he became a lieutenant Colonel and after the war, a full Colonel.

Konstantin fell passionately in love and married an actress named Valentina Serov, but the marriage was doomed to failure as Simonov’s love for Valentina and his military devotion to Russia drove them apart. He was thrust into the position of the patriotic war poet and became a significant contributor to the revival of Soviet morale after the shock of the German invasion of Russia. After the War, their marriage ended and Simonov married again.

Konstantin served in foreign missions in Japan, USA and china, after the war ended. From 1958 t0 1960 he was a correspondent for Pravda in central Asia and lived in Tashkent. Between 1952 and 1971 he wrote several novels and plays. From 1946 through 1979, he held, at various times the positions of editor in chief of the journal New World, editor in chief of the Literary Gazette and secretary of the Union of Writers of the USSR.

Konstantin Simonov died in Moscow in 1979 at the age of 64.