| Agniya Barto | |
|---|---|
| Born | February 7, 1906 |
| Died | April 1, 1981 (aged 75) |
Agniya Lvovna Barto, (Russian: А́гния Льво́вна Барто́; February 17 [O.S. February 4] 1906 Moscow - April 1, 1981 Moscow), was a Soviet Jewish poet and children's writer.
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Agniya was born Getel Leybovna Volova[1] to the jewish family of a Moscow veterinarian named Lev Nikolaevich Volov. She studied at a ballet school. She liked poetry very much and soon started to write her own, trying to imitate Anna Akhmatova and Vladimir Mayakovsky. At her graduation ceremony from the ballet school she read her poetry, among the guests was the Minister for Education Anatoly Lunacharsky, who pronounced that instead of the career of a ballerina she should be a professional poet. According to the legend despite all of Agniya's poetry to that time was about Love and Revolution, Lunacharsky predicted that she will be a famous children poet.
Agniya married an Italian-Russian Electrical Engineer and poet Pavel Barto. Actually quite a few of her children verses were signed by two names Agniya Barto and Pavel Barto. In 1925 she published her first books Chinese boy Wan-Lin (Китайчонок Ван-Линь) and Mishka -the-petty- thief (Мишка-Воришка). Then there were First of the May (Первое мая), 1926 and Brothers (Братишки), 1928 that got a positive review from Korney Chukovsky. After publishing a book of poetic miniatures for toddlers Toys (Игрушки) 1936, she suddenly became one of the most popular children authors with her books published in millions of copies.
During the World War II she wrote patriotic anti-Nazi poetry, often directly addressed to the leader of all the Soviet people, Joseph Stalin. She also worked as a correspondent for the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda for the Western Front. In 1949 she got a Stalin Prize for her book Poetry for the children.
During 1960s Barto worked in an orphanage that inspired her to write poem Zvenigorod (Звенигород, written in 1947 first published in 1966). During nine years Agniya was the anchor of radio programme Find a person (Найти человека), that helped to find the family members lost during the World War II. During that time she helped to reunite no less than a thousand families. She wrote a book about it 1966. In 1977 she published book Translations from the Children language (Переводы с детского) composed of her translations of poetry written by children of different countries.
She was the author of the script for the children movies Foundling (Подкидыш, 1940), Elephant and a Rope (Слон и верёвочка) 1945, Alyosha Ptitsyn trains his character (Алёша Птицын вырабатывает характер), 1953, 10 000 boys (10 000 мальчиков), 1962, Find a person (Найти человека), 1973.