Pavel Grigoryevich Antokolsky was a Soviet and Russian poet and theatre director.
Antokolsky was born on July 1, 1896 in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire. His father was a nephew of sculptor Mark Antokolsky. In the 1930s, Antokolsky worked as a director in the Vakhtangov Theatre in Moscow. During World War II, he ran a front theatre and was awarded a Stalin Prize for a long poem about the Germans killing his son. After the war, he managed a theatre in Tomsk. His poem, "All we who in his name..." was written in 1956, the year of Nikita Khrushchev's "secret speech" condemning Stalinism, and widely circulated among student groups in the 1950s.
Among other works, Pavel Antokolsky translated in Russian Le Dernier jour d'un condamne and Le roi s'amuse, by Victor Hugo.
Antokolsky died on October 9, 1978 in Moscow, Soviet Union.
