Best known in the West as a samizdat poet and author of the anti-Stalinistic poem Requiem, Anna Akhmatova was born in Ukraine and grew up in the affluent village of Tsarskoe Selo, located outside St. Petersburg, near the Imperial Palaces. If her remark defining childhood as a tragic period in a person’s life is to be believed, her early years were unhappy. She began writing poetry at age eleven, taking inspiration from Russian poets Pushkin and Racine. Her father disapproved of her interest, and would not permit her to write under her real name, Anna Adreevna Gorenko. She wrote under the surname of her grandmother.

Much of Akhmatova’s work focuses on the themes of time, memory, fate, issues of concern to women, and the stressful experiences of living and writing in Stalin’s Russia. She and her work were beloved by both men and women. Many male Russian poets and other men fell in love with her. Russian women sought to emulate her style and attitude, with quite a few composing poems in honor of Akhmatova. She married three times, was lover to Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, and praised by the great poet Alexander Blok. Boris Pasternak, though married, proposed to Akhmatova several times.

Her first collection of poetry, entitled Evening, was published in 1912, and praised for its attention to classical detail and use of imagery.

Much of her poetry was written during periods of stringent censorship. She remained undiscouraged, and continued to write and distribute her poetry to others, who would copy it and pass it along to still others. She committed her poetry and those of others to memory, and encouraged others to do the same. During the slight thaw of censorship during World War II, Akhmatova was permitted to again publish. Many admirers in the West were stunned and relieved to learn that she was still alive after Stalin’s purges of the 1930s, which swept away her second husband and scores of her friends and colleagues. Following the war the freeze resumed, with Stalin’s Minister of Culture Andrei Zhdanov referring to Akhmatova as "half harlot, half nun." Her work was once again banned and she was threatened with being sent to a gulag. Akhmatova continued to write and distribute her poems in samizdat form. Her example rallied other authors and creative Russians to do the same, and she became regarded as a symbol of the repressed but never defeated Russian spirit.

When Stalin died in 1953, a new, longer, and more significant thaw took place. A censored edition of her work was published, though not surprisingly to many, her great Requiem was not included. Late in life she was feted, honored, and visited by great and rising authors from several countries, including Robert Frost. She was awarded a number of literary and political prizes, including an honorary doctoral degree from Oxford University. Akhmatova died in St. Petersburg at the age of seventy-six. Requiem was at last published, on the 100th anniversary of her birth.

Image: Akhmatova in 1922 (Portrait by Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin).