Wait for Me (poem)

The poem was written by Simonov over a few days in July 1941 after he left his love Valentina Serova behind to take on his new duties of war correspondent on the battlefront.

Simonov was serving as a war correspondent covering the ordeal of the 14th Army that was defending the Arctic port cities of Archangel and Murmansk against a German offensive launched from Norway and Finland that aimed to take an end to the "Murmansk run" by capturing the two principle Soviet port cities on the Arctic ocean.

[4] The American scholars Richard Stites and James von Geldern wrote about the impact of Wait for me that it was : "...heard on the radio throughout the war, recited by millions as though it were a prayer, repeated by women as tears streamed down their faces, and adopted by men as their own expression of the mystical power of a woman's love".

[2] At a time when bombastic war poems were common, Wait For Me stood out in the sense though the soldier narrator embraces his duty in the Great Patriotic War, but primarily wants to be with the woman he loves, which helped explained why so many servicemen along with their wives and girlfriends embraced the poem as a sort of an anthem.

[6] The Russian term "pokhodno-polevaya zhena ("field campaign wife") referred to the mistresses of Red Army officers whose relationships had a semi-formal status.