Rochko (Rotschko) Grigory Viktorovich (Hirsh Vigdorovich) (22 September 1886 — 16 March 1959) — writer.

Grigory Rochko was the son of the Dvinsk merchant Vigdor Getselovich Rochko, whose patronage made possible the establishment of the Dvinsk Orphanage and a loan fund for the poor.

He graduated from the Department of Economics of the Polytechnic Institute in St Petersburg. In 1912 he began a correspondence with Vasily Rozanov, who later quoted one of Rochko’s letters in Fallen Leaves. Rozanov unsuccessfully urged Rochko to become a contributor to the newspaper Novoye Vremya, and later recommended him to Mikhail Gershenzon.

In 1913 Rochko began publishing reviews of philosophical books in the journal Russkaya Mysl. He subsequently wrote regularly for the newspapers Russkiye Vedomosti and Rech, as well as for the Ezhemesyachny Zhurnal, usually under the pseudonym “G. Tanin.” After the Revolution his contributions to periodicals ceased.

In 1923 Kornei Chukovsky wrote the following about Rochko’s collection of poems At Night:

“The author of the poems you gave me to read is not merely talented — he is exceptionally talented, beyond the ordinary. I read his poems aloud and came to love his great gift. He is not only an architect but also a musician, not only a musician but also an architect.”

This collection remained Rochko’s only published book. He later worked as a consultant in the financial department of the People’s Commissariat of Agriculture of the USSR. In 1930 he was arrested on charges of belonging to a “counter-revolutionary sabotage organisation of the State Bank.” After five years of imprisonment he lived in exile and returned to Moscow after the Second World War.

In 1956 he began corresponding with Alexander Tvardovsky, who highly valued Rochko’s unpublished novella The Tales and Life of Jacques Butterton and proposed preparing a selection of his poems for the third, unpublished volume of the almanac Literary Moscow.

Works:

At Night: A Collection of Poems (Ночью: Сборник стихов). St Petersburg: Raduga, 1923.

Literature:

Second Dobychin Readings. Part II. Daugavpils: Saule, 1994, pp. 3–4.