Yaroslav Vasilevich Smelyakov was a Russian Soviet poet, critic, translator. Winner of the USSR State Prize (1967).
Background
Yaroslav Vasilevich Smelyakov was born on January 8, 1913 in Lutsk, Volyns'ka Oblast', Ukraine in the family of a railroad worker. He lived in Voronezh, when he was a child. After his father died, he at the age of 11 left for Moscow to his sister and brother.
Education
Yaroslav Vasilevich Smelyakov studied at the Moscow school-seven-year period. He graduated from the printing factory school (1931).
Career
Yaroslav Vasilevich worked in the print shop. At the urging of a friend, journalist Vsevolod Jordansky, brought his poems to the editor of youth magazine. But mistook the door and hit the Oktyabr magazine, where he was received by his idol, the poet Mikhail Svetlov, who gave the green light to the young poet. Ironically, one of the first days in the printing house he entrusted to recruit their own same verses. In 1934-1937 he was the victim of the purges.
Member of the Great Patriotic War. From June to November 1941 he was ordinary in the North and the Karelian Front. Once in the environment, it was in Finnish captivity until 1944. Returning from captivity, Yaroslav Vasilevich again came to the Gulag. Thanks to Konstantin Simonov, put in a good word for Smelyakov, he was able to return to writing book "Kremlin ate" in 1948.
In 1951 he denounced two poets arrested again and sent to the Polar Inta. Yaroslav Vasilevich stayed until 1955 when he returned home under an amnesty has not yet rehabilitated.