One of the brightest, most original and talented poets of the Silver Age, Anna Gorenko, better known to her admirers as Akhmatova, lived a long life full of tragic events. This proud and at the same time fragile woman witnessed two revolutions and two world wars. Her soul was seared by repression and the death of her closest people. The biography of Anna Akhmatova is worthy of a novel or film adaptation, which was repeatedly undertaken by both her contemporaries and the later generation of playwrights, directors and writers.

Anna Gorenko was born in the summer of 1889 in the family of a hereditary nobleman and retired naval mechanical engineer Andrei Andreevich Gorenko and Inna Erazmovna Stogova, who belonged to the creative elite of Odessa. The girl was born in the southern part of the city, in a house located in the Bolshoi Fontan area. She turned out to be the third oldest of six children.

As soon as the baby was one year old, the parents moved to St. Petersburg, where the head of the family received the rank of collegiate assessor and became a State Control official for special assignments. The family settled in Tsarskoe Selo, with which all Akhmatova’s childhood memories are connected. The nanny took the girl for a walk to Tsarskoye Selo Park and other places that were still remembered. Children were taught social etiquette. Anya learned to read using the alphabet, and she learned French in early childhood, listening to a teacher teach it to older children.

The future poetess received her education at the Mariinsky Women's Gymnasium. Anna Akhmatova began writing poetry, according to her, at the age of 11. It is noteworthy that she discovered poetry not with the works of Alexander Pushkin and, whom she fell in love with a little later, but with the majestic odes of Gabriel Derzhavin and the poem “Frost, Red Nose,” which her mother recited.

Young Gorenko fell in love with St. Petersburg forever and considered it the main city of her life. She really missed its streets, parks and Neva when she had to leave with her mother for Evpatoria, and then for Kyiv. Her parents divorced when the girl turned 16.

She completed her penultimate grade at home, in Evpatoria, and finished her last grade at the Kyiv Fundukleevskaya gymnasium. After completing her studies, Gorenko becomes a student at the Higher Courses for Women, choosing the Faculty of Law. But if Latin and the history of law aroused a keen interest in her, then jurisprudence seemed boring to the point of yawning, so the girl continued her education in her beloved St. Petersburg, at N.P. Raev’s historical and literary women’s courses.

Poetry

No one in the Gorenko family studied poetry, “as far as the eye can see.” Only on the side of Inna Stogova’s mother was a distant relative, Anna Bunina, a translator and poetess. The father did not approve of his daughter’s passion for poetry and asked not to disgrace his family name. Therefore, Anna Akhmatova never signed her poems with her real name. In her family tree, she found a Tatar great-grandmother who supposedly descended from the Horde Khan Akhmat, and thus turned into Akhmatova.

In her early youth, when the girl was studying at the Mariinsky Gymnasium, she met a talented young man, later the famous poet Nikolai Gumilyov. Both in Evpatoria and in Kyiv, the girl corresponded with him. In the spring of 1910, they got married in the St. Nicholas Church, which still stands today in the village of Nikolskaya Slobodka near Kiev. At that time, Gumilyov was already an accomplished poet, famous in literary circles.

The newlyweds went to Paris to celebrate their honeymoon. This was Akhmatova's first meeting with Europe. Upon his return, the husband introduced his talented wife into the literary and artistic circles of St. Petersburg, and she was immediately noticed. At first everyone was struck by her unusual, majestic beauty and regal posture. Dark-skinned, with a distinct hump on her nose, the “Horde” appearance of Anna Akhmatova captivated literary bohemia.

Soon, St. Petersburg writers find themselves captivated by the creativity of this original beauty. Anna Akhmatova wrote poems about love, and it was this great feeling that she sang all her life, during the crisis of symbolism. Young poets try themselves in other trends that have come into fashion - futurism and acmeism. Gumileva-Akhmatova gains fame as an Acmeist.

1912 becomes the year of a breakthrough in her biography. In this memorable year, not only was the poetess’s only son, Lev Gumilyov, born, but her first collection, entitled “Evening,” was also published in a small edition. In her declining years, a woman who has gone through all the hardships of the time in which she had to be born and create will call these first creations “the poor poems of an empty girl.” But then Akhmatova’s poems found their first admirers and brought her fame.

After 2 years, a second collection called “Rosary” was published. And this was already a real triumph. Fans and critics speak enthusiastically about her work, elevating her to the rank of the most fashionable poetess of her time. Akhmatova no longer needs her husband's protection. Her name sounds even louder than Gumilyov’s name. In the revolutionary year of 1917, Anna published her third book, “The White Flock.” It is published in an impressive circulation of 2 thousand copies. The couple separates in the turbulent year of 1918.

And in the summer of 1921, Nikolai Gumilyov was shot. Akhmatova was grieving the death of her son’s father and the man who introduced her to the world of poetry.

Since the mid-1920s, difficult times have come for the poetess. She is under close surveillance of the NKVD. It is not printed. Akhmatova’s poems are written “on the table.” Many of them are lost during travel. The last collection was published in 1924. “Provocative”, “decadent”, “anti-communist” poems - such a stigma on creativity cost Anna Andreevna dearly.

The new stage of her creativity is closely connected with soul-debilitating worries for her loved ones. First of all, for my son Lyovushka. In the late autumn of 1935, the first alarm bell rang for the woman: her second husband Nikolai Punin and son were arrested at the same time. They are released in a few days, but there will be no more peace in the life of the poetess. From now on, she will feel the ring of persecution around her tightening.

Three years later, the son was arrested. He was sentenced to 5 years in forced labor camps. In the same terrible year, the marriage of Anna Andreevna and Nikolai Punin ended. An exhausted mother carries parcels for her son to Kresty. During these same years, the famous “Requiem” by Anna Akhmatova was published.

To make life easier for her son and get him out of the camps, the poetess, just before the war, in 1940, published the collection “From Six Books.” Here are collected old censored poems and new ones, “correct” from the point of view of the ruling ideology.

Anna Andreevna spent the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War in evacuation in Tashkent. Immediately after the victory she returned to the liberated and destroyed Leningrad. From there he soon moved to Moscow.

But the clouds that had barely cleared overhead—the son was released from the camps—condensed again. In 1946, her work was destroyed at the next meeting of the Writers' Union, and in 1949, Lev Gumilyov was arrested again. This time he was sentenced to 10 years. The unfortunate woman is broken. She writes requests and letters of repentance to the Politburo, but no one hears her.

After leaving yet another prison, the relationship between mother and son remained tense for many years: Lev believed that his mother put creativity in first place, which she loved more than him. He moves away from her.

The black clouds over the head of this famous but deeply unhappy woman disperse only at the end of her life. In 1951, she was reinstated in the Writers' Union. Akhmatova's poems are published. In the mid-1960s, Anna Andreevna received a prestigious Italian prize and released a new collection, “The Running of Time.” The University of Oxford also awards a doctorate to the famous poetess.

At the end of his years, the world-famous poet and writer finally had his own home. The Leningrad Literary Fund gave her a modest wooden dacha in Komarovo. It was a tiny house that consisted of a veranda, a corridor and one room.

All the “furniture” is a hard bed with bricks as a leg, a table made from a door, a Modigliani drawing on the wall and an old icon that once belonged to the first husband.

Personal life

This royal woman had amazing power over men. In her youth, Anna was fantastically flexible. They say she could easily bend over backwards, her head touching the floor. Even the Mariinsky ballerinas were amazed at this incredible natural movement. She also had amazing eyes that changed color. Some said that Akhmatova’s eyes were gray, others claimed that they were green, and still others claimed that they were sky blue.

Nikolai Gumilyov fell in love with Anna Gorenko at first sight. But the girl was crazy about Vladimir Golenishchev-Kutuzov, a student who did not pay any attention to her. The young schoolgirl suffered and even tried to hang herself with a nail. Luckily, he slipped out of the clay wall.

It seems that the daughter inherited her mother’s failures. Marriage to any of the three official husbands did not bring happiness to the poetess. Anna Akhmatova's personal life was chaotic and somewhat disheveled. They cheated on her, she cheated. The first husband carried his love for Anna throughout his short life, but at the same time he had an illegitimate child, about whom everyone knew. In addition, Nikolai Gumilyov did not understand why his beloved wife, in his opinion, not a genius poetess at all, evokes such delight and even exaltation among young people. Anna Akhmatova's poems about love seemed too long and pompous to him.

In the end they broke up.

After the breakup, Anna Andreevna had no end to her fans. Count Valentin Zubov gave her armfuls of expensive roses and was in awe of her mere presence, but the beauty gave preference to Nikolai Nedobrovo. However, he was soon replaced by Boris Anrepa.

Her second marriage to Vladimir Shileiko exhausted Anna so much that she said: “Divorce... What a pleasant feeling this is!”

A year after the death of her first husband, she breaks up with her second. And six months later she gets married for the third time. Nikolai Punin is an art critic. But Anna Akhmatova’s personal life did not work out with him either.

Deputy People's Commissar of Education Lunacharsky Punin, who sheltered the homeless Akhmatova after a divorce, also did not make her happy. The new wife lived in an apartment with Punin’s ex-wife and his daughter, donating money to a common pot for food. Son Lev, who came from his grandmother, was placed in a cold corridor at night and felt like an orphan, always deprived of attention.

Anna Akhmatova’s personal life was supposed to change after a meeting with pathologist Garshin, but just before the wedding, he allegedly dreamed of his late mother, who begged him not to take a witch into the house. The wedding was cancelled.

Death

The death of Anna Akhmatova on March 5, 1966 seems to have shocked everyone. Although she was already 76 years old at that time. And she had been ill for a long time and seriously. The poetess died in a sanatorium near Moscow in Domodedovo. On the eve of her death, she asked to bring her the New Testament, the texts of which she wanted to compare with the texts of the Qumran manuscripts.

They rushed to transport Akhmatova’s body from Moscow to Leningrad: the authorities did not want dissident unrest. She was buried at the Komarovskoye cemetery. Before their death, the son and mother were never able to reconcile: they did not communicate for several years.

At his mother’s grave, Lev Gumilyov laid out a stone wall with a window, which was supposed to symbolize the wall in the Crosses, where she carried messages to him. At first there was a wooden cross on the grave, as Anna Andreevna requested. But in 1969 a cross appeared.

The Anna Akhmatova Museum is located in St. Petersburg on Avtovskaya Street. Another one was opened in the Fountain House, where she lived for 30 years. Later, museums, memorial plaques and bas-reliefs appeared in Moscow, Tashkent, Kyiv, Odessa and many other cities where the muse lived.

Poetry

• 1912 – “Evening”
• 1914 – “Rosary”
• 1922 – “White Flock”
• 1921 – “Plantain”
• 1923 – “Anno Domini MCMXXI”
• 1940 – “From six books”
• 1943 – “Anna Akhmatova. Favorites"
• 1958 – “Anna Akhmatova. Poems"
• 1963 – “Requiem”
• 1965 – “The Running of Time”

This year marks the 120th anniversary of the birth of Anna Akhmatova. It would seem that during this time, researchers of her life and work have already unearthed everything - they counted everything that was printed, searched her places of residence and compiled a list of her numerous lovers. However, St. Petersburg researchers Vladimir and Natalya Evseviev (VIN) claim: the researchers lost sight of Akhmatova’s most beloved man. This is... Emperor Nicholas II. No matter how crazy this version may seem, it amazingly explains the inconsistencies in the official biography of Anna Akhmatova.

Three riddles of the poetess

The first mystery that the poetess’s biographers still cannot solve is why she chose the pseudonym “Akhmatova”? After all, Anna Gorenko (the real name of the poetess) had more advantageous and logical options. For example, she was distantly related to the first Russian poetess, Anna Bunina. For an aspiring writer, such a well-known pseudonym is real luck! But Anna ignored Bunina. Unexpectedly for everyone, she took the unknown surname of her maternal great-grandmother - Akhmatova - as a sign of belonging to the descendants of the Mongol Khan Akhmad. In other words, Akhmatova wanted to feel more like the heiress of a ruler than the first Russian poetess!

The second mystery is Akhmatova’s strange behavior. The poetess said that she grew up in a “philistine” family, but she behaved as if she had been raised at the royal court. This trait of hers was always pointed out by everyone who left memories of Akhmatova. For example, Korney Chukovsky wrote: “In her eyes, in her posture and in her treatment of people, one of the most important features of her personality emerged: regal majesty, a monumentally important gait...” Sometimes the poetess entered into the role of the queen so much that her son Lev publicly pulled her back: “Mom, don’t be a king!”

Finally, the third mystery is the too rapid success of Akhmatova’s pre-revolutionary collections. Even her first - according to the poetess herself, “helpless” - poems for some reason were met with unanimous approval from official critics. The only one who did not share their enthusiasm was Akhmatova’s husband, Nikolai Gumilyov. Despite the marriage ties, for a year and a half he categorically refused to publish her poems in his association “The Workshop of Poets”! They seemed to Gumilev immature and unworthy of publication.

Gray-Eyed King

St. Petersburg artists and researchers Natalya and Vladimir Evseviev lived in exile for more than 10 years during Soviet times. It was from there that they brought a sensational version that behind the royal ambitions and poetic success of young Anna Akhmatova was none other than the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II.

For some time we had to live in Provence in an emigrant environment,” the Evsevyevs told MK in St. Petersburg. - There we were introduced to old Russian “whites” who had fled abroad from the revolution. These people told a lot about the situation in St. Petersburg secular society at the beginning of the 20th century. In particular, they told us that Akhmatova was the secret favorite of Nicholas II in the 1910s. At first, we must admit, we didn’t attach any importance to this. But then they discovered another piece of evidence - in the memoirs of Akhmatova’s peer, the artist Yuri Annenkov, which were published in Paris under the title “A Tale of Trifles”: “The entire literary public in those years gossiped about the romance of Nicholas II and Akhmatova,” wrote Annenkov!

Where could Akhmatova meet with Nikolai Romanov? It turns out that it was as easy as shelling pears!

Akhmatova lived in Bezymyanny Lane in Tsarskoe Selo. The windows of her house overlooked the residence of the royal family - the Alexander Palace. By the way, the royal residence was then open to everyone, so Akhmatova could easily meet the emperor during a walk! Now this sounds incredible, but at that time the country’s leaders were much closer to the people: for example, it is known that during the First World War Sergei Yesenin worked in a military hospital side by side with Empress Alexandra and the Tsar’s daughters.

It is interesting that Akhmatova, categorically protesting against the myth of her closeness with Alexander Blok, never denied rumors of an affair with the emperor. Moreover, in Akhmatova’s poems you can find a lot of evidence of this connection! For example, in her first collection “Evening,” which was published in 1912 (Akhmatova was already married to Gumilev at that time!), the image of a “gray-eyed” crowned lover, with whom happiness is impossible for some fatal reason, is very often encountered. One of the poems is called “The Gray-Eyed King” (1910). It is interesting that the most memorable feature of Nicholas II’s appearance, according to the recollections of foreign diplomats, was precisely his “gray radiant eyes”!

“We discovered a poem absolutely dedicated to Nicholas II,” the Evsevievs say. - It is dated 1913 and is called “Confusion”: “It was stuffy from the burning light, And his glances were like rays. I just shuddered: this one can tame me.” There are also the lines: “And the eyes of mysterious ancient faces looked at me...” Who else, besides the emperor, at that time could boast of a “mysterious ancient face”?

Conspiracy of silence

If you believe the Evsevievs, then Akhmatova’s biography will open in a new light. The question of the poetess's khan pseudonym and her strange regal behavior is immediately removed: being the emperor's mistress, it is difficult not to adopt his majestic manners. For example, the previous mistress of Nicholas II - ballerina Matilda Kshesinskaya - also behaved like a queen.

The success of Akhmatova's pre-revolutionary books - "Evening" and "Rosary" - also becomes clear: the collections were published in 1912 and 1914, when, according to the Evsevievs, her relationship with Nicholas II was in full swing. Who would dare to criticize the work of the imperial favorite! It is significant that after the fall of tsarist power, talk about her affair with the tsar in aristocratic circles immediately died down. At the same time, the poetess lost the favor of critics: her third collection, “The White Flock,” published in September 1917, remained unnoticed. Later, Akhmatova published two more books, but they also waited in the wings for almost half a century.

This silence was saving for Akhmatova, the Evsevievs are sure. - After all, she, unlike many people in her circle, remained in Soviet Russia. Imagine what the Soviet government would have done to her if there had been rumors that the poetess was the mistress of the overthrown tsar!

The affair with Nicholas II explains a lot in Akhmatova’s personal life. For example, the fact that in her youth she fell in love exclusively with men older than herself. Or the fact that she developed the warmest relationship with her lovers Nikolai - Nikolai Nedobrovo and Nikolai Punin, who became her third husband.

Child "not from her husband"

The exception is Nikolai Gumilyov, with whom life did not work out right away. They got married in 1910, and before the wedding the poetess wrote to her Tsarskoe Selo friend Sergei von Stein: “I am marrying a friend of my youth, Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilyov. He has loved me for 3 years now and I believe that it is my destiny to be his wife. I don’t know if I love him...”

Akhmatova recalled their family life with sarcasm: “Nikolai Stepanovich was always single. “I can’t imagine him being married,” she said. “Soon after Leva’s birth (1912), we silently gave each other complete freedom and stopped being interested in the intimate side of each other’s lives.”

In 1918, Gumilyov and Akhmatova officially divorced.

By the way, with the birth of Lev Gumilyov, not everything is clear either. Apparently, Nikolai Gumilyov was deeply indifferent to his son: according to Akhmatova’s memoirs, immediately after her birth, her husband began to demonstratively have affairs on the side. And Emma Gerstein, one of the most authoritative Soviet literary critics and a contemporary of the poetess, wrote in the book “From Notes about Anna Akhmatova”: “She hated her poem “The Gray-Eyed King” - because her child was from the King, and not from her husband.” On what basis Gerstein made such a statement is unknown, but literary scholars of this level do not allow themselves to make groundless statements. And, if you believe the Evsevievs and Annenkovs, it turns out that Lev Gumilyov was... the illegitimate son of Nicholas II!

Alisa Berkovskaya

And the stars warned

Astrology has provided yet another “evidence” of a possible connection between Akhmatova and Nicholas II. According to the stars, it turns out that Anna was born between solar and lunar eclipses - this is a very bad sign. Astrologers claim that women with such a star chart attract “fatal” men - those who are destined to experience suffering and tragic death.

All educated people know Anna Andreevna Akhmatova. This is an outstanding Russian poetess of the first half of the twentieth century. However, few people know how much this truly great woman had to endure.

We present to your attention short biography of Anna Akhmatova. We will try not only to dwell on the most important stages of the poetess’s life, but also to tell interesting facts from her biography.

Biography of Akhmatova

Anna Akhmatova is a famous world-class poet, writer, translator, literary critic and critic. Born in 1889, Anna Gorenko (this is her real name), spent her childhood in her hometown of Odessa.

Young Akhmatova. Odessa.

The future classicist studied in Tsarskoe Selo, and then in Kyiv, at the Fundukleevskaya gymnasium. When she published her first poem in 1911, her father forbade her to use her real surname, so Anna took the surname of her great-grandmother, Akhmatova. It was with this name that she entered Russian and world history.

There is one interesting fact associated with this episode, which we will present at the end of the article.

By the way, above you can see a photo of young Akhmatova, which differs sharply from her subsequent portraits.

Personal life of Akhmatova

In total, Anna had three husbands. Was she happy in at least one marriage? It's hard to say. In her works we find a lot of love poetry. But this is rather some kind of idealistic image of unattainable love, passed through the prism of Akhmatova’s gift. But whether she had ordinary family happiness is unlikely.

Gumilev

The first husband in her biography was the famous poet Nikolai Gumilev, from whom she had her only son, Lev Gumilev (author of the theory of ethnogenesis).
After living for 8 years, they divorced, and already in 1921 Nikolai was shot.

It is important to emphasize here that her first husband loved her passionately. She did not reciprocate his feelings, and he knew about this even before the wedding. In a word, their life together was extremely painful and painful from constant jealousy and internal suffering of both.

Akhmatova was very sorry for Nikolai, but she did not feel feelings for him. Two poets from God could not live under the same roof and separated. Even their son could not stop their disintegrating marriage.

Shileiko

During this difficult period for the country, the great writer lived extremely poorly.

Having an extremely meager income, she earned extra money by selling herring, which was given out as rations, and with the proceeds she bought tea and smokes, which her husband could not do without.

In her notes there is a phrase relating to this time: “I will soon be on all fours myself.”

Shileiko was terribly jealous of his brilliant wife of literally everything: men, guests, poetry and hobbies. He forbade her to read poetry in public and did not even allow her to write them at all. This marriage also did not last long, and in 1921 they parted ways.

Punin

Akhmatova's biography developed rapidly. In 1922 she marries again. This time for Nikolai Punin, the art critic with whom she lived the longest - 16 years. They separated in 1938, when Anna's son Lev Gumilyov was arrested. By the way, Lev spent 10 years in the camps.

Difficult years of biography

When he was just imprisoned, Akhmatova spent 17 difficult months in prison lines, bringing parcels to her son. This period of her life is forever etched in her memory.

Lyova Gumilyov with her mother Anna Akhmatova. Leningrad, 1926

One day a woman recognized her and asked if she, as a poet, could describe all the horror that the mothers of the innocently convicted experienced. Anna answered in the affirmative and then began work on her most famous poem, “Requiem.” Here's a short excerpt from there:

I've been screaming for seventeen months,
I'm calling you home.
She threw herself at the feet of the executioner -
You are my son and my horror.

Everything's messed up forever
And I can't make it out
Now, who is the beast, who is the man,
And how long will it be to wait for execution?

During the First World War, Akhmatova completely limited her public life. However, this was incomparable to what happened later in her difficult biography. After all, the Great Patriotic War was still waiting for her - the bloodiest in the history of mankind.

In the 1920s, a growing emigration movement began. All this had a very difficult impact on Akhmatova because almost all of her friends went abroad. One conversation that took place between Anna and G.V. is noteworthy. Ivanov in 1922. Ivanov himself describes it as follows:

The day after tomorrow I'm leaving abroad. I’m going to Akhmatova to say goodbye.

Akhmatova extends her hand to me.

- Are you leaving? Take my bow to Paris.

- And you, Anna Andreevna, are not going to leave?

- No. I will not leave Russia.

- But life is getting more and more difficult!

- Yes, it’s getting more difficult.

- It can become completely unbearable.

- What should we do?

- Won't you leave?

- I won’t leave.

In the same year, she wrote a famous poem that drew a line between Akhmatova and the creative intelligentsia who emigrated:

I'm not with those who abandoned the earth
To be torn to pieces by enemies.
I don't listen to their rude flattery,
I won’t give them my songs.

But I always feel sorry for the exile,
Like a prisoner, like a patient,
Your road is dark, wanderer,
Someone else's bread smells like wormwood.

Since 1925, the NKVD has issued an unspoken ban so that no publishing house publishes any of Akhmatova’s works due to their “anti-nationality.”

In a short biography it is impossible to convey the burden of moral and social oppression that Akhmatova experienced during these years.

Having learned what fame and recognition were, she was forced to eke out a miserable, half-starved existence, in complete oblivion. At the same time, realizing that her friends abroad regularly publish and deny themselves little.

The voluntary decision not to leave, but to suffer with her people - this is the truly amazing fate of Anna Akhmatova. During these years, she made do with occasional translations of foreign poets and writers and, in general, lived extremely poorly.

Akhmatova's creativity

But let's go back to 1912, when the first collection of poems by the future great poetess was published. It was called "Evening". This was the beginning of the creative biography of the future star in the firmament of Russian poetry. Three years later, a new collection “Rosary Beads” appears, which was printed in 1000 pieces.

Actually, from this moment the nationwide recognition of Akhmatova’s great talent begins. In 1917, the world saw a new book with poems, “The White Flock.” It was published twice as large, through the previous collection.

Among Akhmatova’s most significant works we can mention “Requiem”, written in 1935-1940. Why is this particular poem considered one of the greatest? The fact is that it reflects all the pain and horror of a woman who lost her loved ones due to human cruelty and repression. And this image was very similar to the fate of Russia itself.

In 1941, Akhmatova wandered hungry around Leningrad. According to some eyewitnesses, she looked so bad that a woman stopped next to her and handed her alms with the words: “Take it for Christ’s sake.” One can only imagine how Anna Andreevna felt at that time.

However, before the blockade began, she was evacuated to Moscow, where she met with Marina Tsvetaeva. This was their only meeting.

A short biography of Akhmatova does not allow us to show in all details the essence of her amazing poems. They seem to be alive talking to us, conveying and revealing many sides of the human soul.

It is important to emphasize that she wrote not only about the individual, as such, but considered the life of the country and its fate as the biography of an individual person, as a kind of living organism with its own merits and painful inclinations.

A subtle psychologist and a brilliant expert on the human soul, Akhmatova was able to depict in her poems many facets of fate, its happy and tragic vicissitudes.

Death and memory

On March 5, 1966, Anna Andreevna Akhmatova died in a sanatorium near Moscow. On the fourth day, the coffin with her body was delivered to Leningrad, where a funeral took place at the Komarovskoye cemetery.

Many streets in the former republics of the Soviet Union are named after the outstanding Russian poetess. In Italy, in Sicily, a monument was erected to Akhmatova.

In 1982, a small planet was discovered, which received its name in its honor - Akhmatova.

In the Netherlands, on the wall of one of the houses in the city of Leiden, the poem “Muse” is written in large letters.

Muse

When I wait for her to come at night,
Life seems to hang by a thread.
What honors, what youth, what freedom
In front of a lovely guest with a pipe in her hand.

And then she came in. Throwing back the covers,
She looked at me carefully.
I tell her: “Did you dictate to Dante?
Pages of Hell? Answers: “I am!”

Interesting facts from Akhmatova’s biography

Being a recognized classic, back in the 20s, Akhmatova was subject to colossal censorship and silence. It was not published at all for decades, which left her without a livelihood. However, despite this, abroad she was considered one of the greatest poets of our time and was published in different countries even without her knowledge.

When Akhmatova’s father learned that his seventeen-year-old daughter had started writing poetry, he asked “not to disgrace his name.”

Photo from the early 1960s

Her first husband, Gumilyov, says that they often quarreled over their son. When Levushka was about 4 years old, Mandelstam taught him the phrase: “My dad is a poet, and my mother is hysterical.” When a poetry company gathered in Tsarskoe Selo, Levushka entered the living room and shouted a memorized phrase in a loud voice.

Nikolai Gumilyov became very angry, and Akhmatova was delighted and began to kiss her son, saying: “Good girl, Leva, you’re right, your mother is hysterical!” At that time, Anna Andreevna did not yet know what kind of life awaited her ahead, and what age was coming to replace the Silver Age.

The poet kept a diary all her life, which became known only after her death. It is thanks to this that we know many facts from her biography.

Akhmatova was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1965, but it was ultimately awarded to Mikhail Sholokhov. Not long ago it became known that the committee initially considered the option of dividing the award between them. But then they settled on Sholokhov.

Two of Akhmatova’s sisters died of tuberculosis, and Anna was sure that the same fate awaited her. However, she was able to overcome weak genetics and lived to be 76 years old.

While going to the sanatorium, Akhmatova felt the approach of death. In her notes she left a short phrase: “It’s a pity that there is no Bible there.”

Anna Akhmatova with her son

September 18, old style (October 1, new style) will mark the 103rd anniversary of the birth of Lev Gumilyov, a world-famous historian-ethnographer, archaeologist and orientalist, the son of the famous Silver Age poets Anna Akhmatova and Nikolai Gumilyov.

The creator of the passional theory of ethnogenesis, which interprets the laws of the historical process in such a way that science still does not lose interest in it, lived a difficult life in which love for creativity and research, success in his chosen business, world recognition coexisted with family drama and the stigma of being the son of an enemy of the people ...

Mom, dad, me - a friendly family?

Little Leo lost his father twice. First legally, on paper: in 1918 his parents divorced. The initiator of the breakup was Anna Akhmatova, since the poets’ relationship went wrong long before the official separation, back in 1914, four years after the marriage.

And in August 1921, Nikolai Gumilyov was arrested and shot on charges of counter-revolutionary conspiracy - attempts by Akhmatova and the poet’s friends to save him led nowhere. Gumilyov Sr. was rehabilitated posthumously and only in 1992.

The mother could not (didn’t want?) replace the child’s deceased father, surround her son with double love and care - on the contrary, we can say that Leo felt like an orphan almost from birth. He was not even a year old when his parents left him to be raised by his grandmother Anna Ivanovna, the mother of Nikolai Gumilyov, in order to travel without interference, write poetry and literary manifestos, and plunge into the bohemian life of both capitals - Moscow and St. Petersburg.

“I am marrying a friend of my youth, Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilyov. He has loved me for three years now, and I believe that it is my destiny to be his wife. I don’t know if I love him...”

From letters of Anna Akhmatova

Mother or woman with child?


Nikolai Gumilev and Anna Akhmatova with their son

Famous, talented women who had everything except maternal happiness are not so rare.

We are not talking about those who were unable to have a child - give birth, adopt, but about those who were burdened by the role of mother and had difficulty recognizing the very fact of the existence of offspring. We all remember from school literature lessons that Marina Tsvetaeva, Akhmatova’s “rival” for the title of Queen of the Silver Age, was also an unimportant mother. The poetess openly divided children into loved ones and unloved ones; she, like Akhmatova, was helpless in everyday life and indifferent to comfort.
In the hungry year of 1919, unable to feed her daughters, seven-year-old Alya and two-year-old Irina, Tsvetaeva sent them to the Kuntsevo orphanage. Here the youngest died two months later... Judge not, lest ye be judged - the Bible wisely says.

We just wanted to emphasize that the dictate of motherhood imposed by society for centuries: a woman is incomplete if she has not given birth to a new person! – often becomes the cause of family dramas with unwanted, “neglected” children and unhappy parents.

“Nikolai Stepanovich has always been single. I can't imagine him being married. Soon after Leva’s birth (1912), we silently gave each other complete freedom and stopped being interested in the intimate side of each other’s lives.”

Under Grandmother's Wing


Lev Nikolaevich Gumilev with his wife Natalya

The fate of Lev Gumilyov is a complex paradox when it comes to relationships with loved ones. On the one hand, he was born in a love marriage and was the long-awaited heir. There is a well-known story that in Slepnevo, the Gumilev estate near Bezhetsk (now the administrative center of the Bezhetsk district of the Tver region), where Akhmatova lived for the last three months before giving birth, the peasants at a village gathering were promised to forgive their debts if a boy was born.

Nikolai’s elder brother, Dmitry Gumilyov, did not have children, so they were waiting for the successor to the family with special aspirations. On the other hand, from infancy until he was 16, Lev lived with his grandmother in Slepnevo, and saw his parents several times a year (usually on Trinity Sunday, during the summer holidays and Christmas), even when they had not yet separated.

Mom and dad brought toys and books and encouraged their son’s interest in literature, history, geography, archeology, architecture, languages, and art. Nikolai Gumilyov took the grown-up Lev with him on short trips, to literary and scientific meetings, to museums and cinema; Akhmatova helped with money when she received fees.

But every day, instead of his parents, his grandmother was next to the boy, loving, caring, watching over his studies, health and nutrition. The grandson was very similar to his untimely departed son: in appearance, character, and abilities.

Plate of soup and wooden chest


Anna Akhmatova

After graduating from school, in 1929 Lev Gumilev moved to his mother in Leningrad. It was a difficult period for her both in her work and in her personal life. Akhmatova was almost never published, since she was “under suspicion” by the Soviet authorities; she had to earn money by translating.

As for women’s happiness, it was also controversial: the poetess shared her beloved man, art critic Nikolai Punin, with his family. It turned out that for almost ten years Akhmatova and her son and Punin with his wife (the couple did not file for divorce) and daughter lived together in the same apartment.

Living as a bird herself, “Anna of All Rus'” did not seek to defend any privileges for her son and criticized his poems, which imitated his father’s creative style. For some time he slept on a wooden chest in an unheated corridor; A compassionate neighbor in a communal apartment brought a bowl of soup to the mother and son; she also went to the store and helped with the cleaning.

Lev, being supported by his mother and Punin for about a year (the young man was preparing to enter the pedagogical institute in the German language department), in gratitude helped as much as he could: chopping wood, lighting the stove, but the attitude of the household towards him did not warm up.

“Mother was influenced by people with whom I had no personal contact and most of whom I did not even know, but she was much more interested in them than I was.”

From the memoirs of Lev Gumilyov

Moloch of repression


Lev Gumilev

Lev Gumilyov felt dislike for himself as the son of an enemy of the people even at school: his classmates once even voted that “the son of a counter-revolutionary and a class alien element” should be deprived of his textbooks. And in 1935 he was arrested for the first time, but everything worked out thanks to the intercession of his mother: Akhmatova wrote a letter to Stalin asking him to release her son.

The second arrest happened on the eve of the Great Patriotic War, and no one’s efforts helped: Lev Gumilev spent from 1938 to 1944 in a camp. At this time, Akhmatova wrote the poem “Requiem” about the time of terror, of which her son also became a victim.
Why do people cheat?

In an era when the number of divorces outstrips the number of marriages, somehow I already want to figure out what it is... →

There is an assumption that the work was dedicated to Leo, but then Akhmatova removed this dedicatory inscription, fearing to harm the Norillag prisoner even more. He recalled more than once how his mother’s parcels saved him from starvation or illness, and letters allowed him not to go crazy in the green prison - the taiga.

In 1944, the son of the poetess went from the gates of the camp as a volunteer to the front and returned from the war with two medals: “For the capture of Berlin” and “For the victory over Germany.” Afterwards, Lev again found himself in Leningrad, again lived with his mother, their relationship warmed significantly.

For both, a bright streak came after the war: Akhmatova had the opportunity to publish, Lev - to study in graduate school at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and to go on archaeological expeditions. But the envious did not sleep: first Akhmatova fell into disgrace (in 1948, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks issued a decree “On the magazines “Zvezda” and “Leningrad”,” which declared Anna Andreevna’s poetry alien, unprincipled, decadent), and then her son . Gumilyov bitterly joked that before the war he sat “for dad”, and after the war – “for mom” (in 1949–1956).

This woman is sick
This woman is alone
Husband in the grave, son in prison,
Pray for me.

<…>I've been screaming for seventeen months,
I'm calling you home.
I threw myself at the feet of the executioner,
You are my son and my horror.
Everything's messed up forever
And I can't make it out
Now, who is the beast, who is the man,
And how long will it be to wait for execution?

From Anna Akhmatova's poem "Requiem"

"It would be better for you if I died in the camp"


Lev Gumilev with his mother

Lev Gumilyov's return from the camp in 1956 turned out to be different from the previous one: the son and mother had accumulated mutual claims and grievances, both had deteriorated health and both had nothing to live on. Leo believed that his mother was selfish, that she did little to ease his fate in prison; Anna Andreevna was not satisfied with her son’s scientific interests and inattention to her well-being.

The gap intensified, and it got to the point that in October 1961, the son refused to come to the hospital to see his mother, who had suffered a second heart attack, and then to her funeral in March 1966 (he simply handed over the money). The poet Joseph Brodsky recalled that Lev once told his mother: “It would be better for you if I died in the camp.” According to biographers, in the long-term dispute between Akhmatova and her son, there is no right or wrong, and all the i’s have not yet been dotted...

Gumilyov Jr. himself had no children.

The publishing house thanks the Anna Akhmatova Museum in the Fountain House, St. Petersburg, for the materials provided.
We also thank Gelian Mikhailovich Prokhorov for the use of photographs and letters from his personal archive.

I express my heartfelt gratitude to everyone who helped me in the development of this book.

I express my gratitude to Nina Ivanovna Popova,
Director of the Anna Akhmatova Museum,
and employees - Irina Gennadievna Ivanova
and Maria Borisovna Pravdina,
who provided me with unique materials from the scientist’s archive.

Many thanks to the poet and mathematician Vladimir Gubailovsky
and biologist Elena Naimark for scientific advice.

I sincerely thank Olga Gennadievna Novikova,
although I understand that neither she nor many of Lev Gumilev’s students and followers will like this book.

Instead of a preface

The surviving photographs of Lev Gumilyov are puzzling. It seems that sometimes completely different people were photographed instead of him. Memoir evidence does not explain or dispel this strange impression.
“Leva is so similar to Kolya that people are scared. There are almost no traits of mine in him,” Akhmatova said more than once. Lydia Chukovskaya agreed with her, somewhat complementing the portrait of young Lev: “The last time I saw Lev, if I’m not mistaken, was in ’32<…>He was a young man of 17–19 years old, ugly, awkward, shy, with a look very reminiscent of his father.”
“How similar you are to your father,” - with these words began the camp acquaintance of physicist Sergei Stein, future science fiction writer Sergei Snegov, and Lev Gumilyov. Gumilyov Jr. was generally very flattered if others found in him similarities with his father. In the photographs of 1926–1927 taken by Punin, the teenager Lev is indeed very similar to Nikolai Stepanovich.
In a student photograph from 1934, he is not immediately recognizable. A neatly dressed and well-combed young man with an almost childlike face. The matured Levushka-Gumilyovushka from a photograph of 1915. A pure, unspoiled boy. Emma Gerstein called Gumilyov’s face “childish,” which means that the photographer in 1934 did not distort his appearance.
In 1936, Ruth Zernova, a student at the Faculty of Philology of Leningrad State University, described Gumilyov as a fair-haired young man “with a neat, pale face.” Mongolian graduate student Ochiryn Namsrayzhav remembered him as “a young, handsome, gray-eyed youth.”
A home boy, raised by a noblewoman grandmother, could not survive in the Stalinist Soviet Union. He had to disappear. And he disappeared.
In the winter of 1987, Gafazl Khalilulov, a correspondent for the Kazan magazine Chayan, came to the Leningrad apartment of Doctor of Historical Sciences Gumilyov. When the bell rang, the door was opened by Lev Nikolaevich himself, a man of “average height, strong, with the face and body of an old gladiator.”
Unfortunately, many photographs have not survived, and there are gaps in the memoirs. Now it is no longer possible to restore the lost links, because everyone who knew Lev Gumilyov in his youth has long since passed away.
In front of me is a photograph taken in the fall of 1944 for the military registration and enlistment office in Turukhansk. This is a completely different person, ironic and sad. Not only aged, this is understandable: he has already survived prison and a camp - namely another one. A forensic scientist, comparing photographs from 1934 and 1944, would probably get confused and attribute them to different people.
A new feature - a hump on the nose - immediately made Leo look like his mother. After the war, Gumilyov told everyone he knew that the hump was something like a front-line wound: during a German mortar attack, some plank building was smashed, and a board flew off and broke his nose. All of Gumilyov’s acquaintances unanimously report that he was wounded at the front, but, judging by the photograph, his nose was broken not in the war, but in the camp. In Norilsk or even earlier, in Belbaltlag, and even more likely - in the investigator’s office.
Lev Nikolaevich “had a very expressive, beautiful face, large gray eyes, slightly slanted, a nose with a very slight hump, a beautiful mouth shape...” recalled Elena Kheruvimova (Vigdorchik), who worked with Gumilyov on an expedition to Lake Khantaiskoe in 1943.
After the war, Gumilyov changed his appearance several more times. From a photograph from December 1949 (from the investigative file), a rather young face of Caucasian nationality, a shaven-headed abrek, looks at us. Two years later (photo from the camp near Karaganda) Gumilyov resembles an old Uzbek or Kazakh man.
Behind these alien faces, seemingly unlike Gumilyov, are the lost years of prisons and camps, a forced, against his will, retreat from the chosen path. Several times he tried to change his fate. And in 1944, when he volunteered from the rear of Turukhansk to the front, and in 1948, when, despite the circumstances, he nevertheless defended his dissertation, and in 1953–1956, during the camp years, when he found the strength to return to science.
It is impossible to imagine Nikolai Gumilyov as old. Lev Gumilyov, as he grew older, lost his resemblance to his forever young father. But Akhmatova’s features appeared more and more clearly in his appearance. The artist Alexander Osmerkin first drew attention to the similarity between mother and son back in the winter of 1938: “He has a capricious mouth line, like Anna Andreevna.”
In the late fifties, everyone noticed his resemblance to his mother.
Certificate N.I. Kazakevich, employee of the State Hermitage Library, second half of the 1950s: “The similarity of L.N. with his mother was certain, but he was deprived of her majesty.”
Certificate of A.N. Zelinsky, a participant in the Astrakhan archaeological expedition, August or early September 1959: “... appearance... least of all fit in with the legendary image of Nikolai Gumilyov. Of average height, maybe even below average, of a thick build, with a humpbacked Akhmatova nose, with a sloping, stooped back, he sits opposite me and smokes continuously.”
From the diary entries of Georgy Vasilyevich Glekin, biologist, biophysicist. October 1, 1959: “Yesterday I visited A.A. I met Lev Nikolaevich. It’s very strange when, shaking your hand, they say: “Gumilev”... He is a short man, with friendly, but very sad eyes. Her facial features are more reminiscent of her mother.”
From the memoirs of Alla Demidova: “Lev Nikolaevich Gumilev is an absolute Akhmatova, in his old age he became very similar to her.”
Gumilyov in his old age resembled Anna Andreevna not only in appearance, but also in his voice; he had almost the same timbre as his mother. Everyone who listened to Akhmatova’s recordings and watched Gumilyov’s video lectures will certainly agree with me.
The last thirty years of Gumilyov’s life were often photographed; in all the photographs, the resemblance to Akhmatova is obvious, but it did not please Lev Nikolaevich at all.

Part I

nest in the wind

It was a long-awaited child. The marriage of the eldest son Dmitry, to the chagrin of Anna Ivanovna Gumileva, turned out to be childless. By the fall of 1912, the family of the youngest, Nicholas, was waiting for an heir. For some reason, everyone was sure that a boy would be born. Nikolai Stepanovich, having learned about his wife’s pregnancy, took her to Italy to escape the damp spring and the piercing Baltic winds. The Italian sun seemed to be a panacea for physical and mental ailments. Almost no information has been preserved about this trip, only the route: Genoa - Pisa - Florence. From Florence, Nikolai Stepanovich went alone to Rome and Siena, then returned, and he and Anna visited Bologna, Padua, and Venice.
Contrary to hopes, the Italian sun did not warm the cold relationship between the spouses.

Pray for the poor, the lost,
About my living soul,
You, always confident in your ways...

My quiet house is empty and uninviting,
He looks at the forest from one window,
In it someone was taken out of the loop
And then they scolded the dead man.

Was he sad or secretly cheerful,
Only death is a great triumph.
On the worn red plush of the chairs
Occasionally his shadow flashes.

And, prophesying the approaching bad weather,
The smoke spreads low, low.
I'm not scared. I wear it for luck
Dark blue silk cord.

And now I've become a toy,
Like my pink cockatoo friend.

On the ground floor there were rooms for Nikolai Stepanovich and Akhmatova, Dmitry and his wife, as well as a living room, dining room and library. On the second floor lived Anna Ivanovna, Alexandra Stepanovna Sverchkova, the daughter of Stepan Yakovlevich Gumilev from her first marriage, with their children Nikolai and Maria. Here, on the second floor, they set up a nursery for Leva and his nanny.
From the memoirs of A.A. Gumileva (Freygang): “Kolya was a gentle and caring father. Always, when he came home, he first of all went upstairs to the nursery and fussed with the baby.”
But Lev Nikolaevich, in later interviews, stated with regret that he almost never saw his parents as a child. There is no contradiction in this. If Nikolai Stepanovich was at home, he willingly played with the child. He didn't even have to make an effort on himself, like many adults; at times he felt like a child. In 1919–1921, he enjoyed playing blind man’s buff with his studio members, young poets. When Leva grows up a little, they will play at war, at Indians, at travelers. Only Nikolai Stepanovich had little free time. In the fall of 1912, he resumed his studies at the university. In order not to travel to St. Petersburg every day from Tsarskoe Selo, he rented a room in Tuchkov Lane on Vasilyevsky Island. Nikolai Stepanovich and Akhmatova usually did not miss interesting evenings at the Stray Dog, where the literary bohemia of St. Petersburg gathered. In the last three months of 1912 alone, about a dozen meetings of the “Workshop of Poets” took place. Sometimes they took place in the Gumilevs’ house. It happened that one and a half year old Leva, having run away from his nanny, unexpectedly appeared before the poets. The Tsarskoye Selo poets Akhmatova and Leva entered the folklore under the names Gumilvitsa and Gumilvenok. In the spring of 1913, Nikolai Stepanovich and his nephew went to Abyssinia. On the way to Africa, from Odessa, Gumilyov wrote to Akhmatova on April 9, 1913: “Kiss the Lioness for me (funny, I’m writing his name for the first time) and teach him to say “dad”.”
From Nikolai Gumilyov’s letter to Anna Akhmatova on April 25, 1913: “Tell Leo, he will have his own little black child, let him rejoice.”
Nikolai Stepanovich was, of course, joking about the black boy. But he brought a live parrot, light gray, with a pink breast.
The first floor of the Gumilevs' house was decorated with leopard skins, African bracelets, and paintings by Abyssinian artists. The guests were especially impressed by the stuffed panther in the niche between the dining room and living room.
From the memoirs of A.A. Gumileva-Freygang: “It was completely dark, only the bright moon illuminated the standing black panther. I was amazed by this beast with yellow pupils. At first I thought she was alive. Kolya would be able to bring a live panther.”
Leva grew up among these unusual objects. My father's stories about Africa, paintings, skins, and exotic birds developed my already naturally rich imagination. In the surviving photograph, little Leva sits on a leopard skin among toy animals.
Once outside the house, Leva saw the same world as little Anya Gorenko twenty years ago: “My first memories are of Tsarskoye Selo: the green, damp splendor of the parks...”
The nanny drove Levushka on a sled, and “the policeman shook his finger and said: “You can’t cry.” While walking in the park, he once saw the prince on a gray donkey (recorded by Akhmatova’s secretary Pavel Luknitsky). Maybe on a pony after all?
The Gumilevs lived in Tsarskoe Selo from September to May. For the summer, the family went to the Lvov family estate Slepnevo, and the house on Malaya was rented out to summer residents in order to pay for its maintenance and repairs.
After the death of Lev Ivanovich Lvov (1908), the estate passed to his sisters: Varvara, Agatha and Anna. Agatha died in 1910. Varvara Ivanovna was very middle-aged. Anna Ivanovna became Slepnev's real owner.
From Anna Akhmatova’s autobiography: “I spent every summer in the former Tver province, fifteen miles from Bezhetsk. This is not a picturesque place: fields plowed in even squares on hilly terrain, mills, bogs, drained swamps, “gates” of bread, bread...”
“Vorotsa” is a characteristic feature of Tver villages and estates; they played not a protective role, but rather a decorative one. At the sound of the bell, the village children came running and opened the gate, for which the gentlemen presented them with sweets and gingerbread. It turned into a kind of ritual. In general, the structure of the estate and Slepnev’s life are typical for the small landed nobility. This way of life is well known to readers of Turgenev and Bunin.

The houses are slanted, two-story.
And then Riga, the barnyard,
Where are the important geese at the trough?
They are having a non-silent conversation.

In the gardens of nasturtiums and roses,
In the ponds there are blooming crucian carp.
Old manors are scattered
All over mysterious Rus'.

The Gumilevs' house in Slepnev was one-story, with a cross-shaped mezzanine. From the terrace one could go down into the flower garden and further into the park, where acacias, lindens and a lonely old oak grew, which has survived to this day. The estate was divided by a postal route. On one side there is a house, on the other there is an orchard and a vegetable garden.
Patriarchal traditions were preserved in Slepnev. When the whole family was getting ready for the table, they were waiting for Varvara Ivanovna, the oldest person in the house. She was somewhat reminiscent of Catherine II and loved it when this resemblance was noticed. “Until Varvara Ivanovna makes a special sign with her hand, no one sits down at the table.<…>Anna Andreevna called these traditions “the Chinese ceremony and the 18th century,” recalls relative of the Gumilevs E.B. Chernova.
In the summer, in good weather, the table was set right in front of the house. Ten or even fifteen people gathered: the Lvov sisters, their children and grandchildren - the Gumilevs, Lampe, Kuzmin-Karavaevs, Obolenskys.
At the table, the younger ones (not only the grandchildren, but also the sisters’ children - Nikolai and Dmitry) did not start a conversation, but only answered the elders’ questions. If Akhmatova treated the patriarchal customs of the house ironically, Nikolai Stepanovich rather liked them. He especially loved church holidays and always tried to spend them with his family. On Easter, the whole family went to the Tsarskoe Selo palace church.
Old Russian Orthodox traditions were preserved in the Tver region. On Peter's Day, monks from the Nikolaev Terebensky hermitage brought the miraculous icon of St. Nicholas of Myra. She was sent to Bezhetsk along the Mologa River on a boat decorated for the occasion. According to legend, the icon has protected the city from pestilence since the 15th century.

Sometimes there is a procession and singing,
All the bells are ringing,
They are running, which means going with the flow
The icon sailed to the village.