Vasily Lebedev-Kumach

Vasily Ivanovich Lebedev-Kumach ; — 20 February 1949) was a Soviet poet and lyricist.

Biography

Vasily was born on 5 August 1898, to a shoe maker. He went on to work in the printing department of the Revolutionary Military Council, moving on to ROSTO. He attended Moscow State University. He adopted the nickname Kumach, a Turkish name for a variety of red cloth used to symbolize revolution. In time the nickname was added to his surname.
Vasily's satirical verses published in such papers as Rabochaia gazeta, Krest’ianskaia gazeta, Gudok, and Krokodil led to his growing popularity. He also wrote songs for the film Late for a Date.
Vasily wrote numerous songs, the most famous being probably Священная война, Песня о Родине, Гимн партии большевиков and Как много девушек хороших, later immortalized as the Argentine Tango song Serdtse by Pyotr Leshchenko. He worked closely with the composer Isaak Dunayevsky. Composer Lyubov Streicher used Lebediv-Kumach‘s text for her song "A Simple Soviet Man", which was recorded commercially by pianist Maria Yudina in 1937. He was also one of the first persons to use the term blat in print, when Krokodil published the poem Blat-not.