Dizhur Bella (30.07 (12.08)1903, Cherkassy, Kiev province. – 17.02. 2006, New York), chemist-biologist by education, populariser of science, poetess, children's writer.
In 1915 Bella’s father moved the family to the Urals, where he worked on railway construction. After graduating from high school, Bella Dizhur went to study in Leningrad and in 1928 graduated from the chemical-biol. faculty of the Leningrad Herzen Pedagogical Institute. She worked as an assistant at the Department of Organic Chemistry at the Sverdlovsk Medical Institute, as an expert chemist at the regional police department, and as head of the chemical laboratory at a factory. Dizhur is the author of several published scientific works. She became interested in literature in her student years, in the magazine ‘Molodaya Gvardiya (Young Guard)’ her first poems were published (1939). In 1940 she was admitted to the Union of Soviet Writers (by Pavel Bazhov), since 1943 she was professionally engaged in literature. Her first books: ‘Moltaev Lake’ (1949) and ‘A Story about One Campaign’ (1953) were published in Sverdlovsk, then appeared the poetry collection ‘Thoughts’ (1954), which included the poems “Morning”, ‘About a Son’, ‘Thoughts’ and others. Dizhur is the author of two science fiction novels: ‘The Lantern of the Earth’ (1961), ‘The Coast of the Three Brothers’ (1963), a number of popular science works for young people. The books ‘Green Laboratory’ and ‘Invisible Travellers’ were awarded prizes at competitions of the best book for children, the story-trip into the history of glass from ancient burials to crystal and modern lenses ‘Glass River’, in the design of which the famous Estonian graphic artist J. Sooster took part, received the III All-Union Award.
The writer's house in Sverdlovsk was a shelter for many dissidents. Bella Dizhur was expelled from the Union of Writers on charges of cosmopolitanism, and her works were no longer published. In 1976, her son, sculptor Ernst Neizvestny, was forced to leave the USSR; her daughter and her husband lost their jobs and moved to Latvia. In 1979, after the death of her husband, Bella also came to Latvia, hoping for an easier departure abroad from Latvia than from Russia, and settled in Jurmala. But even there she had to live as a ‘refusenik’ for 7 years.
With the support of E. Yevtushenko (Russian poet) she finally received permission to leave the USSR; from June 1987 and until the end of her life she lived in New York. In 1990 a bilingual collection of poems in Russian and English (Shadow of a Soul: Collected Poems) with illustrations by E. Neizvestny was published in the USA. The presentation of the collection took place in Moscow in the presence of the author. Already being a US citizen, Dizhur published in Russian literary editions ‘Znamya’ and ‘Ural’. She was awarded the Korczak Medal (Poland) and Korczak Prize (Germany). On 30 July 2003, on the day of her 100th birthday, Bella Dizhur received congratulations from the US President George Bush and his wife Laura, from the Governor of the Sverdlovsk region Eduard Rossel, and most Russian-language newspapers in America published interviews with the jubilee and her new poems. Bella Dijur died in New York on Friday, 17 February 2006, in her 103rd year of life.
Selected works:
Молтаевское озеро (Molotayev Lake). Свердловск, 1949;
Рассказ об одном походе (A story of one campaign). Свердловск, 1953;
Раздумья (Thoughts) : [poetry]. Свердловск, 1954;
Зеленая лаборатория (Green Laboratory). Свердловск, 1954;
Путешественники-невидимки : рассказы об элементах (Invisible Travellers : stories about elements) : [для среднего возраста]. Свердловск, 1956;
Волокнистый камень (Fibre Stone). Свердловск,1958;
Фонарь земли (The Lantern of the Earth). М., 1961;
Берег трех братьев The Coast of Three Brothers). Свердловск, 1963.
Стеклянная река : рассказы о стекле (Glass River: Stories about Glass) / Б. Дижур ; рисунки Ю. Соостера и Ю. Соболева. М., 1967;
Конструкты молекул (Construction of Molecules). М., 1978; Shadow of a Soul: Collected Poems by Dizhur, 1990;
Мой друг – Коля Заболоцкий (My Friend Kolya Zabolotsky), Урал, 1995, № 12, 235–240.
About:
CLE, vol. 2, 683 (1964);
Dizhur Bella Abramovna. -Encyclopaedia of Fiction: Who is Who / Edited by Vl. Gakov. Minsk, 1995. С. 207.
Golovataya I.V., Speransky A.V. Dizhur Bella Abramovna, Ural Historical Encyclopaedia . 2nd ed., revision and supplement - Ekaterinburg: Akademkniga; Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 2000;
Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Вылепившая характер сына. – Десять веков русской поэзии. Антология. (She moulded the character of her son. - Ten Centuries of Russian Poetry. Anthology).
http://www.magister.msk.ru/library/extelop/authors/d/dizhur.htm