Early life Boris Ivanovich Fomin was born in
Saint Petersburg. His father Ivan Yakovlevich (1869–1935) was a high-ranking army official serving at the State Military control office, who counted
Mikhail Lomonosov among his distant relatives. His mother Yevgenia Ioannovna Pekar (1872–1954), a daughter of
Alexander II's
lady-in-waiting, was of
Austrian origins; she married (but soon divorced) an
Italian man, and it was the latter's musical talents that were considered to be inherited by his grandson who by the age of four played well the
accordion even if having obvious difficulties holding it. Boris had three sisters, Valentina (a year older), Lydia and Olga, 8 and 12 years younger, respectively. "Dorogoi Dlinnoyu" – a wistful nostalgia for the 'old times' – had been banned earlier, in 1927. As the
Great Patriotic War broke out, Fomin stayed in Moscow. Supported by the
Interior ministry, he organized the Yastrebok (Young Hawk) theatre – which for almost a year remained the only functioning one in the Soviet capital – and performed regularly for the frontline
Red Army fighters. The sense of urgency and being in demand again gave him the energy to fight back the disease. He wrote more than 150 war-themed songs; at least three of them were recorded and released in 1945 by Klavdiya Shulzhenko. As the War ended and officials started to return to Moscow, Fomin again became a 'forgotten' author. His name was 'remembered', briefly, as the
Zhdanov-inspired 'anti-poshlust' campaign of 1946, and Fomin found himself in the list of 'ideological aliens', topped by
Mikhail Zoshchenko and
Anna Akhmatova. ==Legacy==