Background
AKHMATOVA, Anna was born in 1888.
AKHMATOVA, Anna was born in 1888.
Studied at Law Department, Kiev Higher Women's Courses, and on Higher History, and Lit. Courses in St. Petersburg.
Translations from French, Chinese, Korean, Rumanian, Bengali, Polish, Hebrew, etc. Till World War I traveled in Western Europe (Germany, France, Italy, etc.). 1912 joined acmeist group.
After execution in 1921 of her husband, poet N. Gumilev, who had headed above literature trend, Soviet publishers refused to print her verse. Only during period of hostilities with Japan, Poland, Finland and Germany was her work printed again. During siege of Leningrad evacuated to Tashkent, where she remained till 1944.
Her literature activity did not last long. August 1946 Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union declared her work dangerous, while she herself was considered a mouthpiece for sentiments “alien to Soviet man”. Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union decree stemmed from Zhdanov’s comment that she was “a frantic ‘fine lady’ pandering to the bourgeois culture of the West”.
Following this she was expelled from Union of Writers. Also accused of belonging to acmeist group whose literature trend was considered reactionary, harmful to socialist realism and “preaching pure art, and escape into mysticism”. 1953 rehabilitated for second time.
Since then has had works printed by central press. However, apart from a few verses, her postwar “Poema bez geroya” (Poem Without a Hero) was not published in the USSR, but was published in New York under title “Vozdushnye puti” (Aerial Ways) (1953).