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Robert Rozhdestvenskiy was a Soviet and Russian poet, translator, and songwriter.
Born Robert Petkevich in the village of Kosikha, West Siberia, his father, Stanislav Petkevich, worked for the NKVD. Drafted into the Red Army in 1941, he served as a lieutenant commanding a platoon in a separate engineer battalion and was killed in action in Latvia in 1945. His mother, Vera Fyodorova, was a military doctor who had previously directed a rural primary school while studying at a medical institute. After his parents divorced when Robert was five, his mother remarried Ivan Rozhdestvenskiy, a military officer, whose surname and patronymic Robert adopted. From 1934, he lived with his parents and grandmother in Omsk. When the war began, his mother went to the front, leaving Robert in the care of his grandmother, Nadezhda Fyodorova.
Robert's first published poem, "My Dad Goes on a Hike with a Rifle," appeared in Omskaya Pravda on July 8, 1941. In 1943, he enrolled in a military music school. His first adult poems were published in 1950 in the magazine Na rubezhe (Petrozavodsk). That same year, he unsuccessfully applied to the Maxim Gorky Literary Institute but studied for a year at Petrozavodsk State University's history and philology department. In 1951, on his second attempt, he was accepted to the Literary Institute, graduating in 1956 and relocating to Moscow. There, he met Yevgeniy Yevtushenko, and later became acquainted with Bulat Okudzhava and Andrey Voznesenskiy.
In 1955, his book Flags of Spring was published in Karelia, followed by the poem "My Love" a year later. While working in Altay in 1955, Rozhdestvenskiy met conservatory student Aleksandr Flyarkovsky, with whom he created his first song, "Your Window."
A defining feature of Rozhdestvenskiy's poetry is its vibrant modernity and the pressing relevance of the questions he poses both to himself and his audience. These concerns resonate widely, touching many people across diverse circles. Arranged chronologically, his lyrical confessions reveal essential aspects of social life—its evolution, maturity, and the spiritual gains and losses experienced over time.
