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Sergei Mikhalkov, Russian poet and author, has died at the age of 96 in a Moscow hospital, Russian media reports referring to his family.

Sergei Vladimirovich Mikhalkov was born in a noble family in Moscow on March 13, 1913. His first poems were published in Soviet periodicals in 1930s. In 1937 he graduated from the M. Gorky Institute of Literature and joined the USSR Writers’ Union. He became a children’s literature classic in his lifetime.

His books deservedly hold a worthy place in the golden fund of modern literature. They have been published in different languages in a total of 400 million copies and continue to be reprinted.

As a member and chairman of the Soviet Writers Union, Mikhalkov was part of smear campaigns against authors including Nobel laureates Boris Pasternak and Alexander Solzhenitsyn.