Naum Mironovich Olev (real name Rosenfeld; 22 February 1939, Moscow - 9 April 2009) was a Soviet and Russian songwriter, journalist, translator and film actor. From 1988 he was a prominent gallery owner in Moscow and took part in its social life.
He was born on 22 February 1939 into a Jewish family not connected with art. His mother worked as a teacher and taught the history of the USSR, his father was a car repair shop manager. He studied at the University of Tartu (Estonia) and the Moscow Institute of History and Archives, but did not graduate from either of them.
Already in his youth he began to write poetry. In 1958, almost by chance, he starred in the famous Soviet detective film "The Case of the "motley". Published as a journalist in "Evening Moscow". In those years he took the pseudonym Olev, so that he would not be mistaken for the son of Mikhail Rosenfeld - the famous war correspondent of "Komsomolskaya Pravda", who died at the front. In the early 1960s he worked in the publishing house "Art Literature" in the editorial office of the literature of Latin American countries - translated from Spanish.
At the same time, thanks to the composer Oskar Feltsman, he switched from just poems to lyrics for songs. In time he became widely known in musical circles of the USSR. Later he began to write songs for cinema: he wrote lyrics for the films "The Man in the Passing Yard", "Mission to Kabul", "The Trust That Broke", "Mary Poppins, Goodbye!", "Treasure Island" and others. Vocal and instrumental suite "Century No. 20" (1985) for the rock band "Autograph".
Naum Olev is the author of poems for songs by Maxim Dunayevsky, Vladimir Bystryakov, Dmitry Danin, Raymond Pauls, Yuri Saulsky, Oskar Feltsman, Alexander Flarkovsky, Igor Matvienko, Alexander Klevitsky, Tatiana Ostrovskaya, Alexander Zhurbin, Gennady Alexandrov and other composers.
In total he created several hundred songs, which were performed by the most famous Soviet and Russian artists, including Edita Piekha, Alla Pugacheva, Iosif Kobzon, Mikhail Boyarsky, Nikolai Karachentsov, Pavel Smeyan, Muslim Magomaev and Valery Leontiev, Zhanna Goroshenya, Mikhail Chuev, Lyudmila Gurchenko, Renat Ibragimov, Tamara Miansarova, Eduard Khil, Yuri Gulyaev, Gelena Velikanova, Larisa Mondrus, Vadim Mulerman, Aida Vedischeva, Lev Leshchenko, Irina Ponarovskaya, Lyubov Uspenskaya and other popular performers.
In 1988 Naum Olev opened the Zero Gallery, where he exhibited works by leading Moscow artists, and worked as a gallery owner until the end of his life. The gallery held exhibitions abroad and in Russia and was a regular participant in the capital's art salons. Since 1989 Olev stopped composing poetry and returned to poetry only in the last years of his life - he wrote poems for the musical "Romeo and Juliet" (2004) and poems for the New Year's project of the First Channel "Twelve Chairs" (2005), as well as began working with Pavel Smeyan on a new musical and poetic cycle, for which he created the compositions "Boldin Autumn", "Trefoil Suit" and others. He starred as an actor in the film "Broadway of My Youth" (1996).
Naum Olev died of illness in an Austrian hospital on 9 April 2009. He is buried in Moscow, at the Donskoye cemetery.
