Article

Name: “Please, Help Me in My Great Sorrow”. Concerning Akhmatova’s Efforts to Free Her Son (New Details) Article two

Authors: Olga E. Rubinchik

Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkinskij Dom) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation

In the section Plots and Destinies

Abstract:

This paper consists of two parts (articles) and focuses on Anna Akhmatova’s efforts to free her son after his arrest in 1949. A series of unpublished material from 1954–1956 from Gershtein’s archive at the Russian State Library (fond 641) is published. Emma Gerstein,

a literary scholar and long-time friend of Akhmatova, was selflessly involved in Akhmatova’s concern for her son.

The first article in the previous issue included two letters from Akhmatova to the writer and influential literary and party functionary Mikhail Sholokhov, as well as petitions from major scholars about Lev Gumilev asking for an expedited review of the prominent historian.

The second article includes a letter from Akhmatova to the poet and “Soviet grandee” Aleksei Surkov – not from the Gerstein archive, but thematically related to the rest of them. A typewritten copy of this letter is held in the Manuscripts Department of the Russian National Library at the Akhmatova Archive (fond 1073). Over the decades Surkov tried, wherever possible, to help Akhmatova and contributed to the publication of her books. As the first secretary of the Union of Writers, he was actively involved in the efforts to free Lev Gumilev.

The article also publishes an unknown letter from Akhmatova to Aleksandr Fadeev, a writer, party official and major literary official of the Stalinist era. In connection with the 1946 decree, he was involved ex officio in harassing Akhmatova, while unofficially trying to help her, and subsequently did much to bring her back into Soviet literature. Fadeev also made efforts to help Akhmatova free her son. The letter to Fadeev is reproduced from a typewritten draft with corrections in Gerstein’s hand.

The publication of the documents is accompanied by Gerstein’s “Explanations” in the fond 641, together with Akhmatova’s letters, and an extensive commentary, which includes an account of Akhmatova’s relationship to Surkov and Fadeev and her situation during the Khrushchev Thaw.

Keywords: A. Akhmatova, E. Gerstein, L. Gumilev, A. Fadeev, A. Surkov, letters, Stalinist repression

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