Konstantin Mikhailovich Simonov (1915-1979)
was a Soviet novelist, playwright, editor and poet. During the Second World War
he was a correspondent for the Red Army newspaper Red Star and reported
on the liberation of Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Poland and Germany; he was
present at the fall of Berlin. During the war he wrote two books of poems, War
and With You and Without You, which contained a series of love poems addressed
to his wife, the actress Valentina Serova. One of
these, Жди меня (‘Wait for Me’) is still one of the most popular
Russian poems of all time. First published in Pravda in
February 1942, when the Germans were outside Moscow, the poem
became immediately popular with Soviet soldiers, many of whom learned it off by
heart, or copied it in letters to wives and girlfriends. The composer Aleksandr
Lokshin wrote a symphonic poem based on the poem. After the War Simonov worked as a diplomat in
Japan, the US and China, then as Pravda reporter in Tashkent. He was chief
editor of Novy Mir from 1946-50 and 1954-58 and of Literaturnaya
Gazetta from 1950-53. He was secretary of the Union of Writers from
1967-79.