Yefim Alekseevich Pridvorov (; – May 25, 1945), better known by the pen name Demyan Bedny (, Damian the Poor), was a Soviet Russian poet, Bolshevik propagandist and satirist. Life Efim Pridvorov was born to a poor family in Hubivka village, in Kherson Governorate, present-day Ukraine. At the age of seven, his father took him to live in Elizavetgrad, but six years later was sent back to his home village to live with his mother "in extreme poverty". When he was 14, his father secured him a paid-for place in a feldsher training college in Kyiv. This was followed by four years of military service. In 1904, he entered the philological and historical faculty of Petersburg University. His university years coincided with the heady times of the 1905 Revolution, and Pridvorov, like most students, became an ardent supporter of the revolution. From 1911 he began to be published in communist newspapers, such as Pravda, and in 1912 he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks). Also in 1911, he published the poem "Of Demyan Bedny", which led to him being known by that name, and began a private correspondence with Vladimir Lenin which was said to develop into a long-lasting personal friendship. His first collected works were published in Basni (Fables) in 1913. During World War I, he once again saw service as a feldsher and was decorated. He was a steadfast supporter of the Bolshevik cause throughout the Russian Revolution and Civil War, writing agitprop from the frontlines. Arthur Ransome described him in 1919 as "fatter than he used to be (admirers from the country send him food) with a round face, shrewd laughing eyes, and cynical mouth, a typical peasant." He was decorated with the Order of the Red Banner in 1923, followed by the Order of Lenin in 1933. In the 1920s and 1930s, he was very popular and variously supported by the Soviet regime. The town of Spassk, Penza Oblast was even renamed Bednodemyanovsk in his honour. He was the only writer to be allocated rooms in the Kremlin. His first political setback came in December 1930, when two of his historical poems were censured by the Central Committee. He wrote a plaintive letter to Stalin asking, and received a long reply accusing him of having insulted the Russian working class. Stalin also disliked a play that Bedny had written in 1932 about the Red