Albina Markevich

Albina Vitoldovna Markevich was born in Tashkent on 25 July 1930. She graduated from the philology department of the Nizami Tashkent State Pedagogical Institute and later studied the theory and history of art at the Repin Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Leningrad.

For many years she taught in schools in Termez and Tashkent, spent four years teaching at a boarding school in the Yaroslavl region, and lectured at Tashkent’s theatre and art institute and its pedagogical institutes.

From 1977 she took part, with a group of philologists, in setting up the Sergey Yesenin Museum in Tashkent and worked there until 1996. In 1994 she joined the board of the Russian Cultural Centre of Uzbekistan, where she helped organise the Pushkin Society and literary clubs.

On 18 December 1999 she opened the Anna Akhmatova club-museum “Mangalochiy dvorik” (“The Brazier Courtyard”) as a public project of the Russian Cultural Centre — first at the Tashkent Tractor Plant’s House of Culture, later in premises of Rossotrudnichestvo. The club holds poetry evenings; the almanacs “Mir Yesenina”, “Mangalochiy dvorik” and “Pod krylom Pegasa” appeared with her participation.

Her poems were published in the magazine Zvezda Vostoka and other Uzbek periodicals. The collections “Mig” (1999), “Zhiva ya?!” (2000), “Na palube zemnoy” (2002) and “Oduvanchik” (2007) were later gathered in the book “Zvyozdnoye vino”. She also compiled the anthology “Anne Akhmatovoy s pochteniyem i lyubovyu”. Some of her poems have been set to music by the composer Gennady Arefyev.

In 2013, by decree of the President of Russia, she was awarded the Pushkin Medal for her contribution to preserving and promoting the Russian language and culture abroad. Her 85th birthday was marked in July 2015 at the Russian Centre of Science and Culture in Tashkent. Reports from 2023 say that, for health reasons, she lives at home and continues to work on the club-museum’s almanac.