p Mikhail Lukonin (b. 1918) ivns born into a peasant family. After school he worked at a factory and then enrolled at the Literary Institute in Moscow. When the war with Germany broke out he joined up at once and the glory of the people’s heroism is reflected in his first slim volume, entitled “Heartbeat”, which came out in 1947.

His attitude to the role of art is akin to that of Mayakovsky, and his credo "to be in the thick of the epoch’s events and happenings" lent his poetry its civic character. Mikhail Lukonin’s most widely-read works are his poem "Declaration of Love”, his cycles "Long Distance Poetry”, "Testing for Rupture”, "The Road to Peace”, and his latest book “Overcoming”.