"Sister in anger and grief". Olga Bergholz - in the Presidential Library collections

May 16, 2018 marks the 108th anniversary of the birth of Olga Fedorovna Bergholz (1910-1975) - a poet who became the voice of the besieged Leningrad, a symbol of life itself, which was supported in the people of her broadcasts on radio. The Presidential Library portal features electronic copies of books by Olga Bergholz: the collection of poems "Leningrad", published in 1944, the play 1945 "They lived in Leningrad", written in co-authorship with Georgy Makogonenko, as well as other materials. In the near future, the Presidential Library collections will be enriched with 500 audio recordings of the well-known blockade reporter Matvey Frolov, and the live voice of Olga Bergholz, which supported the inhabitants of the besieged city, and which can be heard on the portal of the Presidential Library.

... The first poetry of young Olga was published in 1925, Kornei Chukovsky followed her progress in creativity. There was much that could break Bergholz in her pre-war fate. This fragile woman had to endure the death of her daughters, divorce with her husband, the famous poet Boris Kornilov, the arrest of her father, and then herself, on charges of having links with the enemies of the people; Six months after her arrest, she was released and completely rehabilitated. "I buried two children / I'm on my own, / The third daughter was killed / Before the birth - prison ...", wrote the poet. Bergholz was fired and expelled from the party. Her first husband Boris Kornilov was shot in February 1938.

... The news of the beginning of the Great Patriotic War found Olga in Leningrad. She immediately came to the local branch of the Writers' Union and offered her help. "Vera Ketlinskaya, who headed the Leningrad branch of the Writers' Union in 1941, recalled how in the first days of the war Olenka came to her, like everyone called her then, a kind of "charming fusion of femininity and sweep, sharp mind and childish naivety". Unusually serious and collected, she asked Ketlinskaya where and what she could do useful. She directed Bergholz at the disposal of the literary and dramatic editorial staff of the Leningrad Radio", - said Natalia Borisovna Rogova, the chief librarian of the Manuscript Department of the National Library of Russia within the framework of the video lecture "Knowledge of Russia", dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the complete lifting of the siege of Leningrad.

During the terrible days of bombing, fires, food cards, the soft, but firm voice of Olga Bergholz, the poetess who spoke with the residents of the besieged city in their language, sounded over the radio:

О древнее орудие земное,

лопата,

верная сестра земли!

Какой мы путь немыслимый с тобою

от баррикад до кладбища прошли!

Austerely accurate and honest poetry poems from the very heart of the besieged Leningrad give the reader the opportunity to see the life of the besieged city from within:

Был день как день.

Ко мне пришла подруга,

не плача, рассказала, что вчера

единственного схоронила друга,

и мы молчали с нею до утра.

Мы съели хлеб,

что был отложен на день,

в один платок закутались вдвоём,

и тихо-тихо стало в Ленинграде.

Один, стуча, трудился метроном…

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Как мы в ту ночь молчали, как молчали…

Но я должна, мне надо говорить

с тобой, сестра по гневу и печали…

The reality was so cruel that it seemed: people did not want listen to poems. But Bergholz wrote and read them so that they became a fulcrum for everyone who listened to them. In the House of Radio, she almost daily aired, later included in her book "This is Radio Leningrad".

65-year-old Olga Fedorovna passed away on November 13, 1975. The poetess was buried at the Volkovsky Cemetery. Many townspeople did not manage to say goodbye to their favorite poetess, since the obituary was printed in the newspaper only on the day of the funeral. The monument on the poet's grave appeared only 30 years later.

But these are her words for almost six decades, granite slabs of the memorial Piskarevsky cemetery are "talking" to residents and guests of the city:

Здесь лежат ленинградцы.

Здесь горожане – мужчины, женщины, дети.

Рядом с ними солдаты-красноармейцы.

Всею жизнью своею они защищали тебя, Ленинград

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Их имён благородных мы здесь перечислить не сможем,

Так их много под вечной охраной гранита.

Но знай, внимающий этим камням:

Никто не забыт и ничто не забыто.