Vera Mikhailovna Inber, born Shpenzer (10 July 1890, Odessa – 11 November 1972, Moscow), was a Russian and Soviet poet and writer.

Biography

Her father Moshe owned a scientific publishing house "Matematika" ("Mathematics"). Moshe was cousin to the future socialist revolutionary Leon Trotsky. The nine-year-old Lev (Trotsky) lived with Moshe and his wife Fanni in their Odesa apartment when Vera was a baby. Inber briefly attended a History and Philology department in Odessa. Her first poems were published in 1910 in local newspapers. In 1910–1914, she lived in Paris and Switzerland; then she moved to Moscow. During the 1920s, Inber worked as a journalist, writing prose, articles, and essays, and traveling across the country and abroad. During World War II, she lived in besieged Leningrad where her husband worked as the director at a medical institute. According to her The New York Times obituary, she "wrote for the newspaper Leningradskaya Pravda and broadcast over Leningrad radio to keep up the morale and spirit of the hard‐pressed population." Much of her poetry and prose during those times is dedicated to the life and resistance of Soviet citizens. Inber translated into Russian such foreign poets as Paul Éluard and Sándor Petőfi, as well as Ukrainian poets Taras Shevchenko and Maksym Rylsky. She dabbled in cabbala, although it had been forbidden by her elders.

Awards

In 1946, she received the Stalin Prize for her siege-time poem Pulkovo Meridian. She was also awarded several medals.

English translations