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Vasily Lebedev-Kumach

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Vasily Lebedev-Kumach
Native name
Васи́лий Ива́нович Ле́бедев-Кума́ч
Born(1898-08-05)August 5, 1898
Moscow, Russian Empire
DiedFebruary 20, 1949(1949-02-20) (aged 50)
Pen name(Vasily) Kumach
OccupationPoet and Lyricist
EducationMoscow State University

Vasily Ivanovich Lebedev-Kumach (Russian: Васи́лий Ива́нович Ле́бедев-Кума́ч); 5 August [O.S. 24 July] 1898 — 20 February 1949) was a Soviet poet and lyricist.[1]

Biography

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Vasily was born August 5, 1898, to a shoe maker.[2] He went on to work in the printing department of the Revolutionary Military Council, moving on to ROSTO. He attended Moscow State University.[3] He adopted the nickname Kumach, a Turkish name for a variety of red cloth used to symbolize revolution. In time the nickname was added to his surname.[4][5]

Vasily's satirical verses published in such papers as Rabochaia gazeta, Krest’ianskaia gazeta, Gudok, and Krokodil led to his growing popularity.[3] He also wrote songs for the film Late for a Date (1936).

Vasily wrote numerous songs, the most famous being probably Священная война (Svyaschennaya Voyna, 'The Sacred War'), Песня о Родине (A Song About the Motherland),[6] Гимн партии большевиков (Hymn of the Bolshevik Party) and Как много девушек хороших (Such a lot of nice girls!), later immortalized as the Argentine Tango song Serdtse (Сердце-Heart) by Pyotr Leshchenko. He worked closely with the composer Isaak Dunayevsky. Composer Lyubov Streicher used Lebediv-Kumach‘s text for her song "A Simple Soviet Man", which was recorded commercially by pianist Maria Yudina in 1937.[7] He was also one of the first persons to use the term blat (блат) in print, when Krokodil published the poem Blat-not.[8]

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References

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  1. ^ Rubenstein, Joshua; Naumov, Vladimir P. (2001-01-01). Stalin's Secret Pogrom: The Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-08486-3.
  2. ^ Kotkin, Stephen (2017-10-31). Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941. Penguin. ISBN 978-0-7352-2448-3.
  3. ^ a b Kalashnikov, V. A. "Lebedev-Kumach, Vasilii Ivanovich". The Great Soviet Encyclopedia.
  4. ^ Room, Adrian (2014-01-10). Dictionary of Pseudonyms: 13,000 Assumed Names and Their Origins, 5th ed. McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-5763-2.
  5. ^ Room, Adrian (2010). Dictionary of Pseudonyms: 13,000 Assumed Names and Their Origins. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. p. 279. ISBN 9780786443734.
  6. ^ Boobbyer, Philip (2012-11-12). The Stalin Era. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-73937-0.
  7. ^ "A Simple Soviet Man (Советский простой человек), song". Мир русской грамзаписи. The World of Russian Records. Retrieved 2021-10-28.
  8. ^ Alena V. Ledeneva (1998), Russia's Economy of Favours (Russia's economy of favours ed.), Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521621747, OCLC 833245747, OL 683211M, 0521621747
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