Mikhail Lukonin
Mikhail Kuzmich Lukonin (; October 29, 1918 – August 4, 1976) was a Soviet and Russian poet, writer and war correspondent. He was born in Kilinchi and in his youth worked in the Stalingrad Tractor Plant. He started publishing poetry in his teens. He attended the Gorky Institute of Literature from 1937 to 1941. He was a veteran of the Winter War and also worked as a war correspondent in the Great Patriotic War. In October 1941, he was wounded in the village of Negino. The following year, he joined the Communist Party. Initially influenced by the work of Vladimir Mayakovsky, Lukonin forged his own style later on. Much of his poetry about the front was compiled in a volume titled Heartbeat (1948). He was known for longer poems on the theme of postwar reconstruction. He won a Stalin Prize in 1949 for a poem titled “The Working Day,” and a State Prize in 1973 for the collection “Necessity”. He was elected first secretary of the Moscow branch of the Union of Writers, but died soon after his appointment to this post. His selected poetry was translated into English by Dorian Rottenberg and published by Progress Publishers. He was married to a Russian actress Anna Antonenko-Lukonina. References

1918 births
1976 deaths
20th-century Russian male writers
20th-century Russian poets
People from Astrakhan Governorate
Communist Party of the Soviet Union members
Maxim Gorky Literature Institute alumni
Recipients of the Order of Lenin
Recipients of the Order of the Red Banner of Labour
Recipients of the Stalin Prize
Recipients of the USSR State Prize
Russian-language poets
Socialist realism writers
Russian male poets
Russian male writers
Soviet male poets
Soviet male writers
Soviet military personnel of the Winter War
Burials at Novodevichy Cemetery