Vera Mikhailovna Inber, born Shpenzer (10 July 1890, Odessa11 November 1972, Moscow), was a Russian and Soviet poet and writer.
Biography
Her father Moshe owned a scientific publishing house "Matematika" ("Mathematics"). Moshe was cousin to the future socialist revolutionary Leon Trotsky. The nine-year-old Lev (Trotsky) lived with Moshe and his wife Fanni in their Odesa apartment when Vera was a baby.
Inber briefly attended a History and Philology department in Odessa. Her first poems were published in 1910 in local newspapers. In 1910–1914, she lived in Paris and Switzerland; then she moved to Moscow. During the 1920s, Inber worked as a journalist, writing prose, articles, and essays, and traveling across the country and abroad.
During World War II, she lived in besieged Leningrad where her husband worked as the director at a medical institute. According to her The New York Times obituary, she "wrote for the newspaper Leningradskaya Pravda and broadcast over Leningrad radio to keep up the morale and spirit of the hard‐pressed population." Much of her poetry and prose during those times is dedicated to the life and resistance of Soviet citizens.
