Vera Inber

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Vera Mikhaylovna Inber, born Spenzer, Russian: Вера Инбер (July 10, 1890, Odessa — November 11, 1972, Moscow) was a Russian-Soviet poet and writer.

Her father owned a scientific publishing house "Matematika" (Mathematics). Vera 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. In 1920s 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. Much of her poetry and prose during those times is dedicated to the life and resistance of Soviet citizens. In 1946 she received an esteemed governmental award (Gosudarstvennaya premiya SSSR) for her siege-time poem "Pulkovskij meridian" (Pulkov Meridian). She was also awarded several medals.

She translated into Russian such Ukrainian poets, as Taras Shevchenko, and other foreign poets, such as Paul Eluard and Sándor Petőfi.