Joseph Brodsky — poet (nobel) with roots in the USSR
Joseph Brodsky was a Russian-American poet who was tried by Soviet authorities for 'social parasitism' and sentenced to hard labour in Arkhangelsk before being expelled from the USSR in 1972. He went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1987 and served as US Poet Laureate — the only person ever to hold both distinctions.
Tracing the roots — Leningrad (St. Pete)
Born in Leningrad in 1940 to Aleksandr Brodsky, a naval officer and photographer, Joseph grew up in the city's Jewish intellectual underground. His trial — at which the judge asked 'Who authorised you to call yourself a poet?' — became one of Soviet culture's defining moments. Anna Akhmatova, who mentored him, said he was the greatest Russian poet of his generation.
Leningrad (St. Pete). At the time, this region was one of the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union.
A career defined by ambition
"There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them."