Yulia Drunina
| Yulia Drunina | |
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| Born |
May 10, 1924 Moscow, RSFSR, USSR |
| Died | November 21, 1991 (aged 67) Moscow, RSFSR, USSR |
| Occupation | Poet |
| Language | Russian |
| Citizenship | USSR |
| Period | 1945–1991 |
| Genre | Verse (poetry) |
| Relatives | Vladimir Pavlovich Drunin and Mathilde Borisovna Drunina |
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Yulia Vladimirovna Drunina (Russian: Ю́лия Влади́мировна Дру́нина; IPA: [ˈjʉlʲɪjə vlɐˈdʲimʲɪrəvnə ˈdrunʲɪnə], May 10, 1924 – November 21, 1991) was a Soviet poet who wrote in the Russian-language. She was a nurse and a combat medic during World War II and known for writing lyrics and poetry about women at war. Her works are characterized by moral clarity, sincere intonation and based on her real life experience, including participation in the war as a source of inspiration for her writings.
Yulia grew up in Moscow. Her father was a history teacher and her mother worked in a library and gave music lessons. Julia started writing poetry when she was 11 and in the late 1930s one of her poems won a contest and was published in a newspaper.
After the USSR was attacked by Germany in June 1941, 17-year-old Julia joined the Red Cross, trained as a nurse and began volunteering at a local hospital. Later that summer, as the German army approached Moscow, she was dispatched to help build fortifications near Mozhaisk, about 100 km to the West of the capital. There, during an air strike, she got separated from her party and was picked up by a group infantrymen, who needed a combat medic. The group later found itself encircled by the enemy and spent 13 days breaking out through occupied territory. During those 13 days, Yulia fell in love with the battalion commander and described him in several poems written throughout her life, by referring to him simply as "Commander". The commander, along with several other infantrymen from the group, did not make it out of the encirclement, having been killed by a landmine explosion.
Yulia returned to Moscow in the fall of 1941 but soon left for Siberia, together with her father, as part of the civilian evacuation. She did not want to leave Moscow and agreed to evacuate only because of her ailing father, who had suffered a stroke at the beginning of the War. After her father died in early 1942, Yulia went to Khabarovsk, in the Russian Far East, where she enrolled in a school for aviation technicians but, wanting to fight on the frontlines, she soon joined a rifle unit as a combat medic and was sent to the Belorussian Front, where she served alongside Zinaida Samsonova (also a combat medic), who in 1944 died in combat and was posthumously awarded the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union. Drunina later wrote one of her most heartfelt poems, "Zinka", about Samsonova.
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