Iuliia Drunina

Born May 10, 1924, in Moscow. Soviet Russian poet.

Drunina graduated from the Maxim Gorky Literary Institute in 1952. During the Great Patriotic War (1941-45) she served at the front as a volunteer medical battalion officer. Her first collection of poems, In a Soldier’s Overcoat, was published in 1948. Wartime reminiscences, including the theme of the “soldier with blond braids”—the girl who “went from school to the damp trenches”—are central to her lyrical, pastoral, and philosophical poems. Drunina has been awarded two orders and various medals.