Salomėja Nėris

Salomėja Nėris (born Salomėja Bačinskaitė - Bučienė)is one of the best known Lithuanian female poets. Her first collection of poems, titled Anksti rytą (In the Early Morning), was published in 1927.Controversy surrounds her involvement with the Soviet occupation. She was appointed as a deputy to the Soviet-backed "People's Seimas" and was a member of the delegation to the Soviet Union's Supreme Soviet to request Lithuania be accepted into the Soviet Union. Nėris was requested to write a poem in honour of Stalin and was subsequently awarded the Stalin Prize. After that, she wrote more verses on the theme, as encouraged by the USSR Communist Party officials. She spent World War II in the Russian SFSR. Salomėja Nėris returned to Kaunas but fell ill and died of liver cancer in a Moscow hospital in 1945. Her last poems show deep affection for Lithuania itself.