Konstantin Simonov

Konstantin Mikhailovich Simonov, born Kirill Mikhailovich Simonov (, – 28 August 1979), was a Soviet author, war poet, playwright and wartime correspondent, arguably most famous for his 1941 poem "Wait for Me". Early years Simonov was born in Petrograd in 1915. His mother, Princess Aleksandra Leonidovna Obolenskaya, came of the Rurikid Obolensky family. His father, Mikhail Agafangelovich Simonov, an officer in the Tsar's army, left Russia after the Revolution of 1917 and died in Poland sometime after 1921. Konstantin's mother, Alexandra, remained in Russia with Konstantin. In 1919 his mother married Alexander Ivanishev, a Red Army officer and veteran of World War I. Konstantin spent several years as a child in Ryazan while his stepfather worked as an instructor at a local military school. They later moved to Saratov, where Konstantin spent the remainder of his childhood. After completing a basic seven-year education in 1930 in Saratov, he went into the factory workshop school (Fabrichno-Zavodskoe Uchilishche-FZU) to become a lathe-turner. In 1931 his family moved to Moscow. After completing his precision-engineering course, Simonov went to work in a factory, where he remained until 1935. During these years he changed his given name from Kirill to Konstantin because he could not pronounce the sound "r" with an aristocratic lisp.