Naum Isayevich Grebnev (real name Rombach; 1921-1988) was a Russian Soviet poet, translator of folk poetry and classical poets of the Caucasus and the East.
More than 160 books have been published in his translations or with his participation.
He was born on 20 November 1921 in Harbin into a Jewish family. His father, Isai Nakhimovich (Isaiah-Ruvim Nohumovich) Rombakh (1887-1931), a burgher from Kovno, was the editor of the Harbin pro-Soviet daily newspapers "Forward" (1920-1921) and "Tribuna" (1922-1926), from July 1926 he worked in Moscow in Sovtorgflot, then in Vsekhimprom (All-Union Association of Chemical Industry "Vsekhimprom" of the All-Union Council of National Economy of the USSR).
His mother, Leya Iosifovna Galberg (1899-1991), formerly Elizaveta Iosifovna, was a foreign language teacher and translator, including in the Foreign Commission of the Writers' Union, and gave English lessons in the evacuation in Tashkent. With her participation Grebnev's acquaintance with Anna Akhmatova began - at first in absentia. She left handwritten memoirs "In Harbin", where among other things she tells about the arrests of Harbin residents, including the arrest of the mother of the writer Yuri Nikolaevich Abdashev, and how she found her many years later, as well as "Notes of a translator", where she writes a lot about E. D. Stasova.
The Great Patriotic War caught Grebnev from its very beginning, because at that time he served on the border, near Brest. He retreated with the Red Army, got into the famous Kharkov (Izium-Barvenkovskoe) encirclement, where the Germans took 130 thousand Red Army men prisoner, came out one of the few, forced the Seversky Donets, fought at Stalingrad, was wounded three times, and after the last wound on 12 January 1944 the war ended for him. He entitled his memoirs about the war "The war was the most serious event of my biography". Naturally, he put his own war experience into his translation of Rasul Gamzatov's poem "Cranes" (which became the words of a famous song).
After the war Grebnev studied with Gamzatov at the Literary Institute, and from that time their friendship and co-operation began. He graduated from the Literary Institute in 1949. Grebnev also translated poems by the poet's father, Gamzat Tsadasa.
In 1951, at the height of the campaign against cosmopolitanism, he was criticised by M. Bubennov in his article "Do we need literary pseudonyms now?" for using a pseudonym.
Buried in Peredelkinskoye cemetery.
