Rozhdestvensky, Robert Ivanovich

▪ 1995

      Russian poet (b. June 20, 1932, Kosikha, Altay kray, Russian S.F.S.R., U.S.S.R.—d. Aug. 19/20, 1994, Moscow, Russia), was one of a group of young Russian poets who broke away from the strictures of Socialist Realism in the 1950s and '60s and wrote unconventional verse filled with romanticism and introspection. Rozhdestvensky began writing poetry as a boy and published his first collection, Flagi vesny (1955; Flags of Spring), several months before he graduated from the Maksim Gorky Institute of World Literature in Moscow. Along with his better-known contemporary, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, he came of age in the era of artistic freedom that followed Joseph Stalin's death (1953). Despite the political idealism and literary experimentation evident in his early work, Rozhdestvensky never openly criticized the Soviet government, and his poetry remained officially acceptable during the more restrictive 1960s and '70s when others, even Yevtushenko, were in disfavour. Among his other collections were Rovesniku (1962; To My Contemporary), Posvyashcheniye (1970; The Dedication), and Za dvadtsat let (1973; In the Twenty Years). The narrative poem Rekviyem (1961; Requiem) was set to music, as were many of his short love lyrics. Rozhdestvensky was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1977 and was awarded the Lenin Prize in 1979.

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