Semyon Izrailevich Lipkin (Russian: Семён Израилевич Липкин) (6 September (19, New Style) 1911 – 31 March 2003) was a Russian writer, poet, and literary translator. Lipkin's importance as a poet was recognized once his work became available to the general reading public after the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Throughout much of his working life, he was sustained by the support of his wife, poet Inna Lisnianskaya and close friends such as Anna Akhmatova, Joseph Brodsky and Alexander Solzhenitsyn (who thought him a genius and championed his poetry). Lipkin's verse includes explorations of history and philosophy, and exhibits a keen sense of peoples' diverse destinies. His poems include references to his Jewish heritage and to the Bible. They also draw on first-h