Vera Inber (1890–1972)

Vera Inber, née Shpenzer, was born into a prosperous Russian-Jewish family and was a cousin of Leon Trotsky. She spent several years in Switzerland and Paris due to ill-health. She later joined the short-lived Acmeist movement of modernist imagery and verse that flourished in Russia prior to Wold War I. Although one of the most important poets of her generation, Vera Inber is best known for her harrowing account of the 900-day Siege of Leningrad in 1941-1944 by the Germans in World War II, which she recorded in her diary -- it was later published as Nearly Three Years (1945). During the siege, Vera wrote for the newspaper Leningradskaya Pravda and worked in radio broadcasting to help keep up the morale and resistance of the besieged populace. Her poem "The Pulkovo Meridian" (1942) is considered one of Russia’s finest poetic works. In recognition of her literary contributions, Vera Inber was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1946.