Rubtsov grew up in an orphanage in the northern Russian countryside, having lost his parents during World War II. The poetry he wrote in childhood he de-scribed as «reached by the last waves of ancient Russian originality in which there was much that was beautiful and poetic.» Rubtsov studied in the Forestry Institute in Totma near Vologda and in several other schools but did not complete any course of study. He worked as a stoker on fishing boats in the North Sea, where he also served his military duty, and as a carpenter in a Leningrad factory from 1959 to 1962. His poems of that period won him admission to the Gorky Literary Institute in 1962, from which he was expelled in 1964 (he completed the course by correspondence in 1969). The first of his four slim collections, Lirika (Lyric), appeared in 1965.
Fame came to Rubtsov only posthumously; some twenty books of his poetry have been published since his death. His work is in the tradition of Sergey Yesenin, who above all loved the Russian countryside. In spite of a powerful romantic sentiment he never permitted himself to fall into a treacly sweet pathos. He died tragically, killed by his wife.
