Elena Tager Russian poet, prose writer, memoirist Date of Birth: 03.11.1895

1. Early Life and Education
2. Literary Career
3. Marriages and Political Turmoil
4. Arrests and Exiles
5. Rehabilitation and Literary Recognition
6. Posthumous Recognition

Early Life and Education

Elena Mikhailovna Tagger was a Russian poet, prose writer, and memoirist. Born into a noble family, she graduated from a private gymnasium in 1913 and enrolled in the historical and philological faculty of the Bestuzhev Courses for Women, but did not complete her studies.

Literary Career

Tagger began publishing poetry in 1915 and became a member of the Poets' Circle at the Pushkin Society in Petersburg University. She participated in the Pushkin Seminar conducted by S. A. Vengerov and acquainted herself with notable literary figures such as Yury Tynyanov, Yury Oxman, Alexander Blok, Osip Mandelstam, and Leonid Dobichin.

Marriages and Political Turmoil

In 1917, Tagger married poet and Pushkin scholar Georgy Maslov. Following the Russian Revolution, she worked for the Volunteer Army in the Volga region and later for the Soviet government in Samara. After her husband's death in 1920, she returned to Petrograd.

Arrests and Exiles

In 1922, Tagger was falsely accused of espionage and exiled to Arkhangelsk for two years. She returned to Leningrad in 1927 and published prose and translations. After joining the Pereval group in 1929 and being admitted to the Union of Writers in 1934, she was arrested again in 1938. Sentenced to 10 years of corrective labor, she served her term in the Kolyma and Magadan regions.

Rehabilitation and Literary Recognition

Tagger was released in 1948 and lived in Magadan and Biysk. In 1951, she was arrested once more and exiled to Kazakhstan. Following her release in 1954, she returned to Leningrad in 1956. She was rehabilitated, restored to the Union of Writers, and had her book "Winter Shore" reissued in 1957. Her "Story of Afanasy Nikitin" was published posthumously in 1966.

Posthumous Recognition

Tagger's poetry, including verses dedicated to Akhmatova and Mandelstam, circulated in samizdat. Her memoirs of Mandelstam were published in the first volume of his collected works in Washington, D.C., in 1964 and continued to be reprinted in the United States. Tagger's poems were also published in the international literary almanacs "Airways" (1965) and "Viennese Almanac of Slavists" (1982, 1984). They appeared in the Leningrad "Day of Poetry" in 1984. Tageger worked on the unfinished novel "Svetlana" until her death.