p Vladimir Lugovskoy (190L-1957) enteri’.tl the literary scene at the same time as Selvinsky, Antokolsky, Tikhonov and Bagritsky. Originally he belonged to the constructivist group of poets and sought to express the wisdom of the revolution in a dry, m.atter-of-fact manner, using stark, precise formulae. In the 1930s Lugovskoy did a lot of travelling, discovering for himself the world of Central Asia and the Caucasus, which was then going through a turbulent process of revolutionary transformation.

The last years of Lugovskoy’s life were marked by an extraordinary upsurge of creative energy. His philosophical epic "The Middle of the Century" comprising twenty-five lyric poems, his lyric collections "The Summer Equinox" and "Blue Spring" capture the reader’s imagination with their wealth of ideas and their emotional force.