In 1945 Isaiah Berlin, working in Russia for the British Foreign
Office, met Anna Akhmatova almost by chance in what was then
Leningrad. The brief time they spent together one long November
evening was a transformng experience for both, and has become a
cardinal moment in modern literary history.
For Akhmatova, Berlin was a "guest from the future," her
ideal reader outside the nightmare of Soviet life and a link with a
lost Russian world; he became a figure in her cryptic masterpiece
"Poem without a Hero." For Berlin, this "most
memorable" meeting with the beautiful poet of genius was a
spur to his ideas on liberty and on history. But there were tragic
consequences: the Soviet authorities thought Berlin was a British
spy, Akhmatova became a suspected enemy, and until her death in
1966 the KGB persecuted her family. Though Akhmatova was convinced
that she and Berlin had inadvertently started the Cold War, she
remembered him gratefully and he inspired some of her finest
poems.
Gyorgy Dalos--who inteviewed Berlin and many others who knew
Akhmatova well, and who examined hitherto-secret KGB and Poliburo
files--tells the inside story of how Stalin and other Soviet
leaders dealt with Akhmatova. He ends with the touching story of
her posthumous rehabilitation, when Russians astronomers discovered
a new star and name it after her.
Sitemap: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20