Vadim Shefner

Born Dec. 30, 1914 (Jan. 12, 1915), in Petrograd. Soviet Russian writer. Member of the CPSU since 1945.

Shefner, the son of a military man, studied in the rabfak (workers’ school) at the University of Leningrad and served in the Great Patriotic War (1941–45). His poetry collection Defense (1943), his narrative poem Meeting in the Suburb (1945), and his novella Sister of Sorrow (1970) were devoted to the heroic defenders of Leningrad. In his poetry collections Signs of the Earth (1961), Vaults (1967), and Freeboard (1970) he turned toward the traditions of Russian philosophical lyric poetry.

Shefner has also written tales of fantasy, entertaining and ironic in tone, that raise moral questions. They include the novellas Girl at the Precipice, or The Notes of Kovrigin (1964), The Man With Five “No’s,” or the Confession of a Simpleton (1967), and The Utter Mystery (1970).