Konstantin Mikhailovich Simonov (1915-1979) - Soviet poet, prose writer, playwright. With the outbreak of war, he was drafted into the army, worked in the newspaper "Battle Banner." In 1942 he was awarded the rank of senior battalion commissar, in 1943 - the rank of lieutenant colonel, and after the war - colonel. Most of his war correspondence was published in Red Star. During the war years he wrote a number of plays; the widest fame was his lyric poem "Wait for me...." As a war correspondent, he visited all fronts, walked through the lands of Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Poland and Germany, witnessed the last battles for Berlin. In the postwar years, Simonov's social activities developed in this way: from 1946 to 1950 and from 1954 to 1958 he was the editor-in-chief of the New World magazine; from 1954 to 1958 he was editor-in-chief of the New World magazine; from 1950 to 1953 - editor-in-chief of Literaturnaya Gazeta; from 1946 to 1959 and from 1967 to 1979 - Secretary of the Union of Writers of the USSR.