Olga Bergholz: the thorny path to the "siege Madonna"

The article shows how, in a harsh siege environment, Olga Bergholz was formed as a poet of the fighting Leningrad. Relying on her recently published diaries of the war years, the author traces the difficult path of Bergholz's struggle with fatigue, weakness, cold and constant malnutrition in the conditions of constant bombing and shelling, which gave her the right to talk with Leningraders about their deprivations and experiences, and Bergholz expressed in her poetic In her work, her high citizenship made her in the eyes of all Leningraders the first poet of the besieged city.