April 24: the day of death of Elena Blaginina, a poet whose poems Chukovsky called "pure gold"
Elena Blaginina died on April 24, 1989, in Moscow at the age of 85. She wrote children's poems that were known to several generations of Soviet children, as well as "adult" poetry that was not allowed to be published. Much of her poetry was published only after her death and the collapse of the USSR.
From Orel to Literature
Blaginina was born in 1903 in the Oryol region, the daughter of a railway cashier. She read classics and folk tales, which became the basis for her childhood poetry. She wrote her first poem at age eight, a fairy tale at ten, and a short play at eleven.
At 13, she moved with her parents to Kursk, where her grandfather's savings enabled her to enroll in the best gymnasium, the Mariinsky School. After October 1917, all students were dismissed. At 21, she entered the Kursk Pedagogical Institute, walking 7 km to it "in rope-soled shoes."
At 23, she secretly left for Moscow and enrolled in the Literary Institute. She worked at the Izvestia editorial office.
"This is what a mom is like - she's just golden!"
In the 1930s, realizing that "adult" literature wouldn't be published, she turned to children's literature. She published collections of "Autumn," "Sadko," and "That's What a Mother She Is!" Korney Chukovsky called her poems "pure gold."
She contributed to the magazines "Murzilka" and "Zateynik," wrote the screenplay for the cartoon "The Fox, the Hare, and the Rooster," and produced children's radio programs. She translated children's poetry from Polish and Ukrainian.
The husband is under arrest, the name is crossed out.
While still a student, she met her future husband, the poet Georgy Obolduyev. In 1933, he was arrested for "anti-Soviet propaganda." The denunciation mentioned Tsvetaeva's poems, which he read at his "Obolduyev gatherings," and his own lines.
Blaginina supported her husband, visiting him in his Karelian exile, where he worked on the construction of the White Sea Canal. Because of this, her name was excluded from the literary encyclopedia of the USSR several times.
At the outbreak of war, she evacuated to Krasnoufimsk with the Writers' Union, returning to Moscow in 1942. She wrote war-themed poetry and plays for the frontline and children's puppet theater.
The Silenced Poetess
In the 1950s, she supported Pasternak during his persecution, and later, Lydia Chukovskaya, who had been expelled from the Writers' Union. In the 1960s and 1970s, after the publication of her "adult" collections "Windows to the Garden" and "Skladen," she was largely ignored.
The large version of the “adult” poetry was published only after the poetess’s death and the collapse of the USSR.
She outlived her husband by 35 years, having successfully secured the publication of his works: Obolduyev managed to publish only one poem during his lifetime, and he died in 1954 from the effects of a concussion. In 1997, Blaginina's autobiographical novel, "I Love My Tormentor Ever More Frantically," dedicated to his life, was published.
