Welcome to Russian History Retail, episode 236, Anna Akhmatova, Russia's poet.

Last time we covered the nobles who stayed in Russia after the revolution.

Today we cover the life of the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, who also remained in her birth country.

Before we get into our life, I'd like to read a description of her from the book Anna of all the Russians,

a life of Anna Akhmatova by Elaine Feinstein, a book I highly recommend.

Anna Akhmatova is one of the greatest poets of Russian literature.

Her work has a classical elegance drawn from Pushkin, and a passionate voice,

rising directly out of her own life. Many men fell in love with her beauty, yet all three of her

marriages were miserably unhappy. She began writing at a time when to think a woman as a post

was absurd, as she remarked ironically, her genius soared above any such category,

yet she paid for that triumph as a wife and mother. All of the momentous events of the 20th

century touched Akhmatova's life directly, and she became the voice of a whole people's suffering

under Stalin. She needed exceptional courage in the quarter century when she was not allowed to

publish, especially in the years when her son and her third husband were held in the gulag.

An iconic figure for all those whom the regime repressed,

she sustained that heroic role through illness, poverty, and a lifelong conflict between

womenly affections and the demands of her art. Akhmatova endured all her unhappiness

with a dignity and composure, which led Marina Savitseva, the only woman of comparable genius to call

her Anna of all the brushes, as if she were a Zarina. Born on June 23, 1889, as Anna Andreyovna

Gorenko in Bolshoye Fontan Odessa, close to the Black Sea, which is now in part of Ukraine.

Her father, Andrey Antonovich Gorenko, was descended of a minor Ukrainian nobility. Her mother,

Anna Erasmovna Stogovna, was descended of minor Russian nobility. Andrey was a naval engineer

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