Sergey Mikhalkov

Sergey Vladimirovich Mikhalkov was a Soviet Russian writer, poet, playwright and publicist, war correspondent, screenwriter, fabulist, and public figure. He was the author of the lyrics of the national anthems of the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation, chairman of the Union of Writers of the RSFSR, and, from 1992 to 2008, chairman of the International Community of Writers’ Unions. Mikhalkov became best known for his works for children.

S. V. Mikhalkov was born on 28 February (13 March) 1913 in Moscow. He was the son of collegial assessor Vladimir Alexandrovich Mikhalkov (1876–1932) and Olga Mikhailovna Mikhalkova (née Glebova) (1876–1943). He belonged to the old noble Mikhalkov family, whose estate has partially survived in the city of Rybinsk. On his father’s side, Sergey Vladimirovich was the grandson of guards cavalry captain and landowner of the Moscow, Kostroma, and Yaroslavl provinces Alexander Vladimirovich Mikhalkov and Anna (Alice) Loginovna Miller; on his mother’s side, he was the grandson of honorary justice of the peace and leader of the nobility of Venevsky Uyezd Mikhail Petrovich Glebov and Elizaveta Vasilyevna Bezobrazova. He was a direct descendant of the Golitsyn, Ukhtomsky, and other well-known noble families.

Sergey showed a talent for poetry at the age of nine. His father sent several of his son’s poems to the poet Alexander Bezymensky, who responded favorably to them. In 1927 the family moved to the city of Pyatigorsk in Stavropol Krai. During these years Sergey began to be published. In 1928 his first poem, “The Road,” was published in the journal Na Pod’yome (“On the Rise”) in Rostov-on-Don. After finishing school, Sergey Mikhalkov returned to Moscow and worked at a textile factory and in a geological prospecting expedition. From 1933 he became a freelance contributor to the letters department of the newspaper Izvestia and a member of the Moscow Writers’ Group Committee.