Joseph (Josip) Brodsky

Poet, translator, essayist, and playwright Iosif Alexandrovich Brodsky was reviled and persecuted by officials in his native Soviet Union while the Western literary establishment lauded him as one of the finest poets working in the Russian language. From the time he began publishing poetry, both under his own name and under the anglicized name Joseph Brodsky, he aroused the ire of Soviet authorities, which was compounded by the anti-Semitic persecution he faced because of his Jewish ancestry.