| Native Name Lang: | ru |
| Native Name: | Васи́лий Ива́нович Ле́бедев-Кума́ч |
| Birth Place: | Moscow, Russian Empire |
| Vasily Lebedev-Kumach | |
| Birth Date: | 5 August 1898 |
| Occupation: | Poet and Lyricist |
| Pseudonym: | (Vasily) Kumach |
| Education: | Moscow State University |
Vasily Ivanovich Lebedev-Kumach ; - 20 February 1949) was a Soviet poet and lyricist.[1]
Vasily was born August 5, 1898, to a shoe maker.[2] He went on to work in the printing department of the Revolutionary Military Council, moving on to ROSTO. He attended Moscow State University.[3] He adopted the nickname Kumach, a Turkish name for a variety of red cloth used to symbolize revolution. In time the nickname was added to his surname.[4] [5]
Vasily's satirical verses published in such papers as Rabochaia gazeta, Krest’ianskaia gazeta, Gudok, and Krokodil led to his growing popularity. He also wrote songs for the film Late for a Date (1936).
Vasily wrote numerous songs, the most famous being probably Священная война (Svyaschennaya Voyna, 'The Sacred War'), Песня о Родине (A Song About the Motherland),[6] Гимн партии большевиков (Hymn of the Bolshevik Party) and Как много девушек хороших (Such a lot of nice girls!), later immortalized as the Argentine Tango song Serdtse (Сердце-Heart) by Pyotr Leshchenko. He worked closely with the composer Isaak Dunayevsky. Composer Lyubov Streicher used Lebediv-Kumach‘s text for her song "A Simple Soviet Man", which was recorded commercially by pianist Maria Yudina in 1937.[7] He was also one of the first persons to use the term blat (блат) in print, when Krokodil published the poem Blat-not.