Rasul Gamzatov

Poet

Birthday September 8, 1923

Birth Sign Virgo

Birthplace Cada village, Khunzakhsky District, Dagestan ASSR, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union

DEATH DATE 2003-11-3, Moscow, Russia (80 years old)

Nationality Russia

#19980 Most Popular

1923

Rasul Gamzatovich Gamzatov (ХӀамзатазул Расул ХӀамзатил вас, ; Расу́л Гамза́тович Гамза́тов; 8 September 1923 – 3 November 2003) was a popular Russian poet who wrote in Avar.

Among his poems was Zhuravli, which became a well-known Soviet song.

Gamzatov was born on 8 September 1923 in the Avar village of Tsada in the north-east Caucasus.

His father, Gamzat Tsadasa, was a well-known bard, heir to the ancient tradition of minstrelsy still thriving in the mountains.

He was eleven when he wrote his first verse about a group of local boys who ran down to the clearing where an airplane had landed for the first time.

A number of different poems by him also became songs, such as Gone Sunny Days.

1939

In 1939 he graduated from Pedagogical College.

He had various jobs serving as a school teacher, an assistant director in the theater, a journalist in newspapers and a radio host.

1945

From 1945 to 1950 he studied at the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute.

1952

Gamzatov was awarded the State Stalin Prize in 1952, The Lenin Prize in 1963, and Laureate Of The International Botev Prize in 1981.

2003

Gamzatov died on 3 November 2003 at the age of 80 in the Moscow Central Clinical Hospital.

He was buried in the old Muslim cemetery in Tarki, next to the grave of his wife.

2013

A monument to Gamzatov was unveiled on 5 July 2013 on Yauzsky Boulevard in central Moscow.