Vasily Lebedev-Kumach

Vasily Lebedev-Kumach
Василий Лебедев-Кумач
Born(1898-08-05)5 August 1898
Moscow, Russia
Died20 February 1949(1949-02-20) (aged 50)
Moscow, Soviet Union
EducationMoscow State University
OccupationsPoet and Lyricist
Writing career
Pen name(Vasily) Kumach

Vasily Ivanovich Lebedev-Kumach (Russian: Василий Иванович Лебедев-Кумач); 5 August [O.S. 24 July] 1898 — 20 February 1949) was a Soviet poet and lyricist.[1]

Biography

Vasily was born on 5 August 1898, to a shoemaker.[2] He went on to work in the printing department of the Revolutionary Military Council, moving on to Russian Telegraph Agency (ROSTO). He attended Moscow State University.[3] He adopted the nickname Kumach, a Turkish name for a variety of red cloth used to symbolise revolution. In time the nickname was added to his surname, as Lebedev-Kumach.[4][5]

Vasily's satirical verses published in such papers as Rabochaya gazeta, Krest’ianskaia gazeta, Gudok, and Krokodil led to his growing popularity.[3]

He was also one of the first persons to use the term blat (блат) in print, when Krokodil published the poem Blat-not.[6]

Vasily also wrote numerous songs, the most famous being probably Священная война (Svyaschennaya Voyna, 'The Sacred War'), Песня о Родине (A Song About the Motherland),[7] Гимн партии большевиков (Hymn of the Bolshevik Party), and Как много девушек хороших (Such a lot of nice girls!), later immortalised as the Argentine Tango song Serdtse (Сердце-Heart) by Pyotr Leshchenko. He also wrote songs for the film Late for a Date (1936).

He worked closely with the composer Isaak Dunayevsky. Composer Lyubov Streicher used Lebedev-Kumach‘s text for her song "A Simple Soviet Man", which was recorded commercially by pianist Maria Yudina in 1937.[8]

References

  1. ↑ Rubenstein, Joshua; Naumov, Vladimir P. (1 January 2001). 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 (31 October 2017). Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941. Penguin. ISBN 978-0-7352-2448-3.
  3. 1 2 Kalashnikov, V. A. "Lebedev-Kumach, Vasilii Ivanovich". The Great Soviet Encyclopedia.
  4. ↑ Room, Adrian (10 January 2014). 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. ↑ 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
  7. ↑ Boobbyer, Philip (12 November 2012). The Stalin Era. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-73937-0.
  8. ↑ "A Simple Soviet Man (Советский простой человек), song". Мир русской грамзаписи. The World of Russian Records. Retrieved 28 October 2021.
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