Oshanin, Lev

Born May 17 (30), 1912, in Rybinsk, now in Yaroslavl Oblast. Soviet Russian poet. Member of the CPSU since 1944.

Oshanin, who began to publish in 1930, studied at the M. Gorky Institute of Literature between 1936 and 1939. The principal themes of his poems are the romance of creation and the struggle for peace; he has also written many love lyrics. He is the author of a number of verse collections, among them Always on the Way (1948), Children of Different Peoples (1950), Poems of Love (1957), Ballads (1965), I Walked Through the Snowstorm … (1970), and The Islanders (1972).

In the late 1930’s Oshanin began to write song lyrics. His poems have been set to music by such composers as A. Novikov (“Anthem of the World’s Democratic Youth,” 1947), A. Pakhmutova (“Song About Anxious Youth,” 1960), and M. Fradkin (“The Volga Flows,” 1962). In 1950, Oshanin was awarded the State Prize of the USSR for the cycle of poems and songs he wrote for the motion picture Youth of the World. He has also received two orders and several medals.