Lydia Chukovskaya
1907–1996 (age 89)
Biography
Lydia Korneyevna Chukovskaya (Russian: Ли́дия Корне́евна Чуко́вская, IPA: [ˈlʲidʲɪjə kɐrˈnʲejɪvnə tɕʊˈkofskəjə] ; 24 March [O.S. 11 March] 1907 – February 7, 1996) was a Soviet and Russian writer, poet, editor, publicist, memoirist and dissident. Her deeply personal writings reflect the human cost of Soviet repression, and she devoted much of her career to defending dissidents such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov. The daughter of the celebrated children's writer Korney Chukovsky, she was wife of scientist Matvei Bronstein, and a close associate and chronicler of the poet Anna Akhmatova.
She was the first recipient, in 1990, of the new Andrei Sakharov Prize for Writer's Civic Courage.