Viktor Bely

Who is Viktor Bely?

Viktor Arkadyevich Bely, also Viktor Aronovich Bely, was a Russian composer and social activist.

Bely was born in Berdychiv, Ukraine, then in the Russian Empire. In 1929 he graduated from the Moscow Conservatory and later taught on the faculty of that school from 1935–1948. In 1939 he became a member of the All-Union Communist Party. He wrote a very beautiful song about the heroism of the "Five Sailors of Sebastopol" according to Alexander Werth in La Russie en guerre volume 1 p. 287. He was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1952 and was named an honored artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1956. In 1980 he was endowed with the honorary title of People's Artist of the USSR.