Old postcards Portraits of Soviet writers and poets

This section holds Soviet postcards with portraits of writers, issued as two sets: writers and poets on cards printed in 1961 and poets on cards printed in 1981. Nearly all captions give full names with patronymics (middle names formed from the father’s first name), so each author is easy to find by surname.

Several 1961 captions place the real surname next to the pen name: Alexei Maximovich Gorky (Peshkov), Demyan Bedny (Yefim Alekseyevich Pridvorov). The same set includes Pavel Bazhov (1879–1950), author of the Ural tales The Malachite Box, and the Kazakh akyn — a traditional improvising poet-singer — Jambyl Jabayev (1846–1945).

The 1981 set introduces poets from different Soviet nationalities. David Kugultinov (1922–2006) was a Kalmyk poet, named People’s Poet of the Kalmyk ASSR; Kaisyn Kuliev (1917–1985) was a Balkar poet and prose writer. Next to them are authors from Georgia and Moldova, Irakli Abashidze and Pavel Boțu.

For researchers of Soviet national literatures, the two sets work as a visual index of the authors chosen for portrait cards in 1961 and in 1981.