Pavel Kogan (1918–42)

Pavel Davydovich Kogan (1918, Kiev–1942, Novorossiysk, Krasnodar region) was a Soviet romantic poet. He was born into a traditional Jewish family but he did not receive a traditional education. In 1922, the family moved to Moscow from his native Kiev. From 1936 to 1939, Kogan studied at the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature, and History, followed by studies at the Maxim Gorky Institute of Literature, where he was one of a group of young poets who attended the celebrated poetry seminar conducted by Ilia Selvinsky, together with A. Yashin, ¹ M. Kulchinsky, ² and others. ³ Selvinsky considered Pavel one of the best students in his seminar and he believed he had a brilliant future as one of the Soviet Union’s greatest poets in the twentieth century. ⁴