Paper/Proposal Title

Anna Akhmatova-- Greatest Poet of Russia and One of Her First Dissidents

Presenter/Author Information

Tatiana Liaugminas, University of Dayton

Location

River Campus Room M2005

Start Date

10-4-2013 1:00 PM

Abstract

The history of Russia over the past 100 years is not only one of political crises, but of a cultural catastrophe. After the Revolution of 1917 the Bolsheviks destroyed an entire civilization. A generation of cultural leaders died or emigrated. Most of those who stayed were imprisoned or otherwise silenced. Therefore, the books people read and wrote before 1917 and the ideas they had differed from what the Russians read, wrote or thought in the years afterwards. There was however a small number of exceptions, a group of creative people who were neither silenced, destroyed or completely transformed by the revolution. One of these was the poet Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966). She was the very embodiment of pre-revolutionary Russian culture. The values expressed in her poetry--individuality, artistic freedom, emotional truth--were in themselves traitorous. Akhmatova's poems were denounced as reactionary, the hangover from the era of Tsarism, and she herself was denounced as half nun, half whore. The official stance was that she failed to address the proletariat.

In 1925, as a victim of Soviet officialdom, she was not permitted to publish, and although never arrested, she was under constant surveillance--a microphone had been installed in her ceiling, yet, she refused to emigrate, something she considered a betrayal of her culture. Akhmatova's greatest tragedy was the repeated imprisonment of her only son. Les Gumiliov was arrested on obscure charges and spent fourteen years in the gulag. Thus, Stalin who understood that if he touched the beloved poet he would only succeed in canonizing her, had found the most effective way of torturing her.

This paper proposes to examine the violation of human rights during the Soviet purges with Anna Akhmatova as one of its most prominent examples.

Comments

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Oct 4th, 1:00 PM

Anna Akhmatova-- Greatest Poet of Russia and One of Her First Dissidents

River Campus Room M2005

The history of Russia over the past 100 years is not only one of political crises, but of a cultural catastrophe. After the Revolution of 1917 the Bolsheviks destroyed an entire civilization. A generation of cultural leaders died or emigrated. Most of those who stayed were imprisoned or otherwise silenced. Therefore, the books people read and wrote before 1917 and the ideas they had differed from what the Russians read, wrote or thought in the years afterwards. There was however a small number of exceptions, a group of creative people who were neither silenced, destroyed or completely transformed by the revolution. One of these was the poet Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966). She was the very embodiment of pre-revolutionary Russian culture. The values expressed in her poetry--individuality, artistic freedom, emotional truth--were in themselves traitorous. Akhmatova's poems were denounced as reactionary, the hangover from the era of Tsarism, and she herself was denounced as half nun, half whore. The official stance was that she failed to address the proletariat.

In 1925, as a victim of Soviet officialdom, she was not permitted to publish, and although never arrested, she was under constant surveillance--a microphone had been installed in her ceiling, yet, she refused to emigrate, something she considered a betrayal of her culture. Akhmatova's greatest tragedy was the repeated imprisonment of her only son. Les Gumiliov was arrested on obscure charges and spent fourteen years in the gulag. Thus, Stalin who understood that if he touched the beloved poet he would only succeed in canonizing her, had found the most effective way of torturing her.

This paper proposes to examine the violation of human rights during the Soviet purges with Anna Akhmatova as one of its most prominent examples.