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Anna Akhmatova was arguably the greatest Russian woman poet.
She was born Anna Andreevna Gorenko on June 23, 1889, in Bolshoi Fontan, a suburb of Odessa, Ukraine, Russian Empire. Her father, Andrei Antonovich Gorenko, was a Navy Engineer. Her mother, Inna Erazmovna (nee Stogova), belonged to Russian Nobility. From 1890-1905 her father served in St. Petersburg at the Headquarters of the Imperial Trade Fleet and Ports under Grand Prince Aleksander Mikhailovich. The family lived in Tsarskoe Selo, the elite Royal suburb of St. Petersburg. Young Anna Akhmatova received an excellent private education and attended the Tsarskoselky Gymnasium for Ladies. After the divorce of her parents in 1905, she lived in Kiev for 4 years. There she graduated from the Fundukleevsky Gymnazium in 1907, and attended the Law school of Kiev University for 2 years. Back in St. Petersburg she studied at the St. Petersburg Classes for women (Zhenskie Kursy) from 1911-1913.
Akhmatova started writing poetry from age 11, and signed her first publication with her real name, Anna Gorenko. Her father objected that she used his name, because he also was a writer, and even met Fyodor Dostoevsky and corresponded with Anton Chekhov. Then Anna made up a pseudonym 'Akhmatova' and invented a poetic myth of her connection to the Tatar Khan Akhmat; her pseudonym was a product of her creative imagination. In 1910, in Kiev she married Nikolai Gumilev, whom she knew for five years. Gumilev was an important Russian poet and critic, the founder of the literary movement of Acmeism. The young couple spent a honeymoon in Paris. There she met with then little known artist Amedeo Modigliani. She made a second trip to Paris in 1911 and to Italy in 1912, and continued her friendship with Modigliani, who made fifteen portraits of her, some of them nude. Inspired by love, Akhmatova wrote her first book of poetry "Evening" (Vecher, 1912). At the same time Akhmatova met Vladimir Mayakovsky at the St. Petersburg literary club 'Brodyachaya Sobaka' (Stray Dog). Her son Lev Gumilev was born in October of 1912. Her next books "Rosary" (Chyotki, 1914) and "The White Flock" (Belaya Staya, 1917) brought her literary fame. Her poetry was highly praised by Yuri Tynyanov and Boris Pasternak.
Terror came in her life with the Russian revolution of 1917. Communists killed leading intellectuals by thousands. Akhmatova's separated husband Nikolai Gumilev was executed in 1921 on the charges of "anti-Soviet plot". After publishing her books "Plantain" (Podorozhnik, 1921) and "Anno Domini MCMXXI (1922) she was ostracized as "bourgeous". She witnessed the brutal arrest of poet Osip Mandelstam, who criticized Joseph Stalin and later was killed in a Siberian prison-camp. Publication of her works has been banned from 1925 to 1953. One modest collection of her poetry was published in Leningrad in 1940, but was banned the same year and confiscated from all Soviet libraries and book stores. In spite of her own suffering, Akhmatova supported a young struggling writer Olga Berggolts. At the beginning of the Nazi siege of Leningrad Akhmatova was starving and helpless. She was evacuated to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where she lived with the family of Korney Ivanovich Chukovskiy. In the middle of WWII her poem 'Courage' was published in Pravda.
Akhmatova's husband Nikolai Punin was a chief curator of the Hermitage and a prominent art historian and writer. He was arrested in 1935, after his criticism of ugly life in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin. Punin criticized the loss of civilized values and tasteless portraits of the Soviet dictator Vladimir Lenin, thousands of which flooded the renamed city of Leningrad. Akhmatova had to burn all of her husband's documents and photographs in order to protect his life. Then she was assisted by her friends Mikhail A. Bulgakov and Boris Pasternak in writing a petition to Joseph Stalin, and her husband was released. The second time Akhmatova tried to save Punin from under arrest was in 1949. At that time, Punin lectured that Cezanne and Van Gogh were great artists, and he described the portrait of Vladimir Lenin, as "a bootleg, not a painting"; for such anti-communist statement he was arrested and exiled to the Gulag prison-camp. He died in a Vorkuta prison-camp in 1953. This time Akhmatova was powerless, because she was under KGB surveillance.
After the end of the Second World War Akhmatova was interviewed in Leningrad by Sir Isaiah Berlin, who came for a visit from London in the fall of 1945. In August of 1946 Akhmatova was attacked by the Central Committee of the Communist Party, because Joseph Stalin pushed repressions against intellectuals (writers, musicians, doctors). Akhmatova was labeled "alien to the Soviet people" for her "eroticism, mysticism, and political impartiality." She was censored along with Boris Pasternak, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Sergei Prokofiev, and other leading intellectuals. The official ban was imposed on all publications and public performances of Akhmatova, and she was deprived of livelihood until the death of Joseph Stalin.
After her expulsion from the Union of Writers in 1946, Akhmatova was left penniless. At that time she was threatened by the Soviet authorities and moved from Leningrad to Moscow with the family of Viktor Ardov. Ardov, Chukovsky, and Fadeev later helped reinstate her membership in the Union of Writers. Boris Pasternak gave a special reading of the unpublished version of his novel 'Doctor Zhivago' for Akhmatova. In 1955 she received a small dacha-cabin in Komarovo, a suburb of Leningrad (St. Petersburg). There she was living and writing in the summertime, working on her major works: 'Poema bez geroya' and 'Requiem'. But her masterpiece 'Requiem' was not published until 1987. 'Requiem' is a monumental poem about survival of the people through the 'Great Terror' and dictatorship of Stalin.
Her only son Lev Gumilev (1912 - 1992) was a historian and philosopher, who survived several arrests and spent many years in the Soviet Gulag prison-camps. Akhmatova and her circle in the 50's and 60's Leningrad was an unofficial incubator for talented youth, such as her apprentice Joseph Brodsky. In 1962, Akhmatova was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and in 1964 she was awarded the Etna-Taormina Prize for poetry. Akhmatova also received an honorary doctorate from Oxford University (1965).
Anna Akhmatova died on March 5, 1966, in Domodedovo, a suburb of Moscow. Akhmatova's burial service was held at the St. Nicholas Naval Cathedral in St. Petersburg, she was laid to rest in the Komarovo cemetery, near St. Petersburg, Russia.
