Anna Akhmatova (pseudonym of Anna Andreyevna Gorenko, 1889-1966) is one of Russia’s most acclaimed poets. The daughter of a naval engineer, she became a member of the Acmeist group of poets, led by her future husband Nikolai Gumilyov, when she was 21. She married Gumilyov in 1910 and they had one son, Lev. They were divorced in 1918. After Gumilyov was executed in 1921 for antirevolutionary activities, Akhmatova entered a period of almost complete poetic silence until 1940. When her son was exiled to Siberia, she attempted to help him by penning a poem eulogizing Stalin: Poem Without a Hero, 1963. It was begun in Leningrad in 1940 and revised for over 20 years. One of her finest works, Requiem, 1963, is a poem-cycle that was a literary monument to the victims of Stalin’s Terror.
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