The poet Irina Bassova

 

Mother of Kirill Zaborov

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Born in Leningrad, Irina Bassova moved to the Crimea with her mother Lucia Bernstein shortly after her birth. Her father, the poet Boris Kornilov, was a victim of the great Stalinist purges. She grew up in the Crimea with her mother and her second father, the painter Yakov Bassov. After studying biology in Moscow, she moved to Minsk with her husband Boris Zaborov. She left the Soviet Union in 1980 with her family and has lived in France since 1981. In Paris, she worked as a journalist and essayist, and had the pleasure of being the editor of the newspaper Russian Thought (La Pensée russe) from 1982 to 1992. 

 

From her earliest childhood, her mother instilled in her a love of poetry, and she has always composed verses. Her poems have appeared in magazines such as Neva, Neman, Grani, as well as in the almanac Poetry Day and several collections.