Hope Against Hope

* Mrs. Mandelstam identifies Merkulov only by his initial, but his name is given in full in Ehrenburg's memoirs ("at the beginning of 1952 I was visited by the Briansk agronomist V. Merkulov"), which Mrs. Mandelstam may have seen before publication.

from him on my return from Tashkent had forgotten or confused some details—in particular, he referred to Merkulov as an agrono­mist, since, wanting to lie low after his release, he had indeed worked as an agronomist. What Merkulov told Ehrenburg substantially bore out what Kazarnovski had told me. He thought that M. had died in the first year, before the opening of navigation to Kolyma in May or June. Merkulov gave a detailed account of his conversation with the camp doctor, who was also, fortunately, a prisoner and had re­portedly known M. from previous days. The doctor said that it was impossible to save M. because he was so terribly emaciated. This confirms what Kazarnovski said about his being afraid to eat any­thing—though camp food was such that people turned into wraiths even if they did eat it. M. was only in the hospital for a few days, and Merkulov met the doctor immediately after his death.

M. did right to ask the biologist to go to Ehrenburg with his story —no other Soviet writer, with the exception of Shklovski, would ever have agreed to see such a person in those years. As for visiting any of those writers who were treated as outcasts—nobody coming from a camp would have dared go near them for fear of being sent back again.

People who had served sentences of five or ten years—which meant they had got off very lightly, by our standards—usually stayed, either voluntarily or because they had no choice, in the re­mote areas where the camps were located. After the war many of them were put back in the camps, becoming what were known in our incredible terminology as "repeaters." This is why there is only a tiny handful of survivors from among all those who were sent to the camps in 1937-38—you only stood a chance if you were very young at the time—and why I have found so few ex-prisoners who met M. But stories about his fate circulated widely in the camps, and dozens of people have told me all kinds of legends about him. I have several times been taken to see people who had heard—or, rather, as they always put it, "knew for a fact"—that M. was still alive, or had survived until the war, or was still in one of the camps, or had been released. There were also people who claimed to have seen him die, but on meeting me they generally admitted with embarrassment that they knew about it only from other people (described, needless to say, as completely reliable witnesses).

Some people have written stories about M.'s death. The one by Shalamov, for example, is an attempt to convey what M. must have felt while dying—it is intended as a tribute from one writer to an­other. But among these fictional accounts there are some whicl claim to provide authentic detail. There is one about how M. sup posedly died on the boat going to Kolyma. The story about his mur der by criminals, and about his reading of Petrarch by the light of : campfire likewise belong to the realm of legend. Many people havi fallen for the Petrarch story because it conforms so well to "poetic' convention. Then there are stories of a more "down-to-earth" kind always involving the common criminals. One of the most elaborate of these accounts is told by the poet R. Late one night, says R., some people knocked on the door of the barracks and asked for R. by name. R. was very frightened because they were criminals, but they proved to be friendly and had come with the message that he was to go to another barracks where a poet lay dying. When R. arrived he supposedly found M. lying in his bunk either unconscious or in a delirium, but, seeing R., he immediately revived a little and they spent the whole night talking. In the morning M. died and R. closed his eyes. No date, as usual, is given in this account, but the place— the transit camp of Vtoraya Rechka near Vladivostok—is correctly identified. The story was told to me by Slutski, who gave me R.'s address. But when I wrote, he never replied.

With one exception, however, all my informants have at least been well intentioned. The exception was a certain Tiufiakov, who used to come and see me in Ulianovsk at the beginning of the fifties, before Stalin's death. Tiufiakov behaved monstrously toward me. He was a member of the literature faculty at the Teachers' Training College and deputy director of it. A war veteran, he was covered with medals for his service as a political officer, and he loved to read war novels which described the execution of cowards or deserters in front of their units. He had devoted the whole of his life to the "reconstruction of higher education," and for this reason he had not had time to take any degrees himself. He was a typical Komsomol of the twenties who had then made a career as a "permanent official." He had been relieved of teaching duties so that he could devote all his time to watching over "ideological purity," the slightest devia­tions from which he duly reported to the right quarters. He was transferred from college to college, mainly to keep an eye on direc­tors suspected of "liberalism." It was for this that he had been sent to Ulianovsk as deputy director—a peculiar post of a nominal kind which did not carry any teaching duties. We had two eternal Kom­somols like this. Apart from Tiufiakov, there was also Glukhov, whose name should be recorded for posterity. This man had re­ceived a medal for his part in the deportation of the kulaks, and had also been awarded a doctorate for a dissertation on Spinoza. He per­formed his duties in quite open fashion, summoning students to his office and instructing them whom they should get up and denounce at meetings, and in what terms. Tiufiakov, on the other hand, did his work in secret. Both of them had been involved in purging insti­tutions of higher education ever since the beginning of the twenties.

Tiufiakov's "work" with me was undertaken voluntarily, beyond the call of duty—just for his own recreation. He clearly derived an almost aesthetic pleasure from it. Every day he thought of some­thing new to tell me: M. had been shot; M. had been in Sverdlovsk, where Tiufiakov had visited him as an act of human kindness; M. had been shot while trying to escape; M. was at the moment serving another sentence in a camp for a criminal offense; M. had been beaten to death by criminals for stealing a piece of bread; M. had been released and was living somewhere in the north with a new wife; M. had quite recently hanged himself when he heard of Zhdanov's speech, news of which had only just reached the camps. Each of these stories he relayed to me with a great air of solemnity, saying he had heard it after making inquiries through the Prosecu­tor's office. I had to sit and listen to him, because it was impossible to throw out a police agent. I also had to listen to his views on litera­ture: "Our best poet is Dolmatovski. . . . What I appreciate most in poetry is clarity. . . . Say what you like, but you can't have po­etry without metaphors. . . . Style is not only a matter of form, but a matter of ideology, too—remember what Engels said about this, you have to agree with him. . . . Have you ever received any of the verse Mandelstam wrote in the camp? He wrote a lot there. . . ." Tiufiakov's wiry body was like a coiled spring. There was always a smile lurking on his face under his military mustache, which was very like Stalin's. He said he had got some real zhen- shen* from the Kremlin hospital, and that no artificial product could compare with it.

I often heard reports about poems written by M. in the camp, but they always turned out to be false—whether deliberately or unwit­tingly so. Recently, however, I was shown a curious collection of items which had been taken from poetry "albums" compiled in the camp. Most of the poems were rather garbled versions of unpub­lished poems, excluding all those with the slightest political under­tones (such as the poem about our apartment). The bulk of them

* A Chinese root which supposedly has rejuvenating properties.

must have been made from manuscript copies which circulated in the thirties, but these were often written down from memory, which explains the large number of mistakes. Some of them appeared in old versions that M. had discarded ("To the German Language," for instance). A few can only have been written down from his dictation, since they had never existed in written copies. Among them was a poem he had written as a child about the crucifixion. Is it possible that he had remembered it and recited it to someone? These camp albums also contained a few humorous poems which I did not have before ("Dante and the Cab Driver," for example), but they are unfortunately in a badly garbled form. Such things could only have been brought to the camps by people from Leningrad, of whom there were very many.

This collection was shown to me by Dombrovski, the author of a book about our life which was written, as they used to say in the old days, "with his heart's blood." Though it has a lot about archaeologi­cal excavations, snakes, architecture and young ladies working in offices, it is also a book which gets to the very core of our wretched existence. Anybody who reads it cannot fail to understand why the camps were bound to become the main instrument by which "stabil­ity" was maintained in our country.

Dombrovski says that he met M. in the period of the "phony war" —that is, more than a year after December 27, 1938, which I had accepted as the date of his death. The sea route to Kolyma was al­ready open for navigation, and the man whom Dombrovski took to be M.—or really was M.—was among a batch of prisoners about to be transported there from the Vtoraya Rechka transit camp. Dom­brovski, who was then still very young, full of life and eager for friendship, had heard that there was someone among them nick­named "The Poet" and wanted to see him. When Dombrovski went over to the group and shouted for "The Poet," someone came for­ward and introduced himself as Osip Mandelstam. Dombrovski had the impression that he was mentally ill, but still not completely out of touch with reality. It was the briefest of meetings—they talked about whether the crossing to Kolyma would be made, in view of the military situation, but then "The Poet," who looked about sev­enty, was called away to eat his kasha.

The fact that this prisoner looked so old—whether or not it really was M.—proves nothing one way or the other. In those conditions people aged amazingly quickly, and M., moreover, had always looked much older than his years. But how can Dombrovski's ac­count be squared with what I had heard previously? It may be that M. left the hospital alive after all those who knew him had been sent to other camps, and that he lingered on for a few more months or even years. Or it may have been some other old man with the same name who was taken for Osip in the camps—there were lots of Man- delstams with similar first names and faces. Are there any grounds for believing that the man seen by Dombrovski really was M.?

When I told him what I had already heard, Dombrovski's confi­dence in his own story was slightly shaken, but I found it perplexing, and I'm no longer sure of anything now. Can one ever know any­thing for certain in our life? I have carefully pondered the argu­ments both for and against his story.

Dombrovski had not known M. previously, and though he had seen him several times in Moscow, it was always at periods when M. had grown a beard—whereas the person he met in the camp was clean-shaven. All the same, Dombrovski thought he looked like M. in some ways. This does not mean very much, of course, since there is nothing easier than to be wrong about faces. But Dombrov­ski learned one significant detail at the time—not, admittedly, from "The Poet" himself, but from other people in the camp: namely, that M.'s fate had been decided by some letter of Bukharin. This could mean that the letter written to Stalin by Bukharin in 1934 had played some part in the investigation after M.'s second arrest in 1938 —together, no doubt, with the notes from Bukharin confiscated dur­ing the search of our apartment. It is more than likely that this was so, and the only person who could have known about it was M. himself. The only question is: Had the old man nicknamed "The Poet" himself said this to the prisoners who passed it on to Dom­brovski, or was it only attributed to him as something told by a dead man for whom he was later taken? There is just no way of checking this. But the fact that there was this story about Bukharin's letter is of great interest to me: this is the only echo that has reached me about the case brought against M. after his second arrest. In his "Fourth Prose" M. wrote: "My case has not been closed and never will be closed." How right he was! Because of Bukharin's letter, M.'s case was reviewed in 1934 and then again in 1938. It was then re­examined once more in 1955, but it still remains completely obscure, and I can only hope that it may one day be properly investigated.

What of the evidence in favor of the version of M.'s death that I had previously accepted—namely, that it took place in December 1938? The first news I got came in the shape of the parcel returned "because of the addressee's death." But this is not conclusive: we know of thousands of cases in which parcels were returned for this reason, though in fact, as became known later, they had not been delivered because the addressee had been transferred to another camp. The return of a parcel was firmly associated in people's minds with the death of the addressee, and for the majority it was the only indication that a relative in a camp might have died. In fact, how­ever, in all the confusion of the overcrowded camps, the officials in military uniform were so brazen that they wrote whatever came into their heads—who cared? People sent to the camps were in any case thought of as dead, and there was no point in standing on ceremony with them. The same thing happened at the front during the war: officers and soldiers were reported dead when they were only wounded or had been taken prisoner. But at the front it was a case of honest errors being made—nobody did it out of callousness, as in the camps, where the inmates were treated like cattle by brutes specially trained to trample on all human rights. The return of a parcel can­not, therefore, be regarded as proof of death.

The date on the certificate issued by the Registry Office also proves nothing. The dates put on such documents were often arbi­trary: vast numbers of deaths, for instance, were postdated to war­time. This was a statistical device to conceal the number of people who died in the camps by blurring the difference between them and the casualties of the war period. When the rehabilitations began in the days after Stalin's death, people were almost automatically put down as having died in 1942 or 1943. How can one possibly take at its face value the date on the death certificate when one thinks of the rumor started for foreign consumption that M. was in a camp in the Voronezh region and was killed there by the Germans? Who launched this story? Clearly, one of our "progressive" writers or a Soviet diplomat, pressed on the matter by some "foreign busybody" (to use Surkov's expression), had put all the blame on the Germans. What could be simpler?

The certificate also stated that M.'s death had been entered in the register of deaths in May 1940. This entry on the certificate is more convincing as evidence that he had died by then. Though even here one cannot be absolutely certain. Imagine, for instance, that Romain Rolland, or somebody else whom Stalin wanted to keep in with, had approached him with a request for M.'s release. There were cases of Stalin releasing people because of some plea from abroad. Stalin might have decided not to listen to the plea, or he might have found that it was impossible to do anything about it because M. had been too badly beaten by the guards in prison. In either case, nothing would have been easier than to declare him officially dead, and to make me the channel for disseminating such a false report. As I have said, nobody in my position was ever given a death certificate, so what was the reason for letting me have one?

Be that as it may, the fact is that if M. really did not die until some time before May 1940—say, in April—it could be that he was indeed the old man seen by Dombrovski.

How reliable is the information given by Kazarnovski and Khazin? Most camp prisoners have only a very hazy idea of the pas­sage of time. In their monotonous existence, dates become blurred. M. could have left the hospital alive after Kazarnovski had been sent somewhere else. Rumors in the camp about M.'s death do not mean very much—the camps lived on rumors. M.'s encounter with the doctor cannot be dated either—they might have met a year or two later. Nobody knew or could ever find out anything for certain in those zones bounded by barbed wire, or in the world outside them, for that matter. No one will ever understand what happened in the terrible shambles of those teeming camps, where the dead with num­bered tags on their legs lay side by side with the living.

Nobody has said he actually saw M. dead. Nobody claims to have washed his body or put it in the grave. For those who went through the camps, life was like a delirium in which the sequence of time was lost and fact became mixed with fantasy. What these people have to say is no more reliable than similar accounts of any other calvary. Those few who survived to bear witness, including such people as Dombrovski, had no chance to check their facts at the time, let alone to weigh hypotheses about them.

I can be certain of only one thing: that somewhere M.'s sufferings ended in death. Before his death, he must have lain dying on his bunk, like others around him. Perhaps he was waiting for a parcel—a parcel which never came in time and was sent back to me. For us its return was a sign that he had died. He, on the other hand, may have concluded from its non-arrival that something had happened to us: this because some well-fed official in military uniform, a trained killer, weary of searching through endless, constantly changing lists of prisoners for one unpronounceable name, had simply scrawled on the accompanying form the simplest thing that came into his head: "Addressee Dead"—and I, who had prayed for the merciful release of my husband, received these last, inevitable good tidings from a girl clerk in a Moscow post office.

And after his death—or even before it, perhaps—he lived on in camp legend as a demented old man of seventy who had once writ­ten poetry in the outside world and was therefore nicknamed "The Poet." And another old man—or was it the same one?—lived on in the transit camp at Vtoraya Rechka, waiting to be shipped to Kolyma, and was thought by many people to be Osip Mandelstam— which, for all I know, he may have been.

That is all I have been able to find out about the last days, illness and death of Mandelstam. Others know very much less about the death of their dear ones.

83 One Final Account

_В

ит there is still a little more to tell. The transport which took M. to Vladivostok left Moscow on September 9, 1938. An­other person who was on it is a physicist called L. He does not wish to be identified because, as he says, "things are all right just now, but who knows what may happen later?" During the terror he worked in a Moscow technical college whose staff was completely decimated because one of its members was the son of a man hated by Stalin. L. was taken to join this transport from the Taganka prison. Others were brought from Butyrki, to which they had been transferred from the Lubianka just before the transport was due to leave. As the train was traveling east, L. learned from another prisoner that M. was there, too. The other prisoner had learned this after he had fallen ill and been put in the sick bay, where he had met M. He reported to L. that M. just lay on his bunk all the time, his head covered with a blanket. He still had a little money and the guards sometimes bought bread rolls for him at stations. M. al­ways broke them in two and gave half to another prisoner, but he wouldn't touch his own half until, peeping out from under his blanket, he had seen the other man eat his. Only then would he sit up and eat himself. Terrified of being poisoned, he was starving himself, refusing to touch the soup on which the prisoners were fed.

The train arrived in Vladivostok in the middle of October. The transit camp was terribly overcrowded, and there was no room for the new prisoners, who were ordered to settle down in the open air between two rows of barracks. The weather was dry, and L. was in no hurry to get inside: he had at once noticed the half-naked people sitting near the latrines—one can imagine what they were like!—and getting rid of the lice in their ragged clothes. Spotted typhus had not yet broken out.

A few days later all the new arrivals were seen by a commission consisting of representatives of the Kolyma camp authorities. They badly needed building workers there, but it was not easy to find able- bodied people with the right skills among these hordes of prisoners worn out by nighttime interrogations and the "simplified methods" now in use. Many of them were rejected for work, including the thirty-two-year-old L., who was lame—he had broken his leg as a child. Few people were thus being taken away from the transit camp, but transports continued to arrive with hundreds and hundreds more prisoners. L. was able to make an approximate calculation as to their numbers. As a person with mathematical training, he carefully observed and analyzed everything he saw during his twenty years in the camps. But he will never pass on what he knows: worn out by his life as a prisoner and having no more trust in anything, his only wish is for peace and quiet. The whole of his existence now revolves round his new family: this sick and aging man lives only for his young daughter. He is one of the most brilliant witnesses to the past, but he will never share his knowledge with anyone. He has made an exception only for me—his meeting with M. made a great impres­sion on him. I should have asked him whether the commissions from Kolyma did not soon start taking anybody they could get and just simply work them to death. But I forgot to ask this question.

When the rains started, there were great fights to get places in the barracks. By this time L. had been selected "elder" of a group of sixty men. His only duty had been to distribute the bread ration among them, but when the rains started, they demanded that he find a roof for them. L. suggested they see whether there was still any room in the lofts above the barracks—for the more agile prisoners these lofts were a godsend, since they were much less crowded and the air was less foul. It was not possible to stay in them during winter because of the cold, but nobody thought as far ahead as that—pris­oners always take a very short-term view of their interests, and these would have been glad of the few extra weeks of comparative inde­pendence which they could gain by clambering up into the lofts at night.

They soon heard about a loft which was occupied by five crimi-

One Final Account Z9Z

nals, though there was room for three times as many. L. and some of his comrades went to reconnoiter. The entrance was blocked by boards, but one of them was loose and L. wrenched it away to find himself face to face with the leader of the gang of criminals inside. He braced himself for a fight, but the man politely introduced him­self: "Arkhangelski." They started to parley. It appeared that the camp commandant had personally assigned this loft to Arkhangelski and his friends. L. suggested they go and see the commandant to­gether, to which Arkhangelski politely agreed. The commandant's attitude was rather surprising: he tried to reconcile the two parties. This was possibly due to an involuntary feeling of respect for L., who had not hesitated to challenge a gang of criminals; or perhaps he took L. for a criminal as well. At any rate, he suggested that Arkhan­gelski and his friends should make room because of the general "housing crisis," as he termed it. L. returned in triumph to his com­rades in order to pick out a dozen or so of them to move into the loft, but they had all changed their minds—none of them wanted to live with criminals for fear of being robbed. L. pointed out that they had no possessions to lose, and that there would be twice as many of them, but they preferred to stay out in the open. The only result of it all was that L. had made a new friend—he and Arkhangelski henceforth greeted each other whenever they met, which was gen­erally in the center of the camp, where the prisoners carried on a kind of barter trade among themselves.

Once Arkhangelski invited L. to come up to the loft and listen to some poetry. L. was not frightened of being robbed, since for months he had been sleeping in his clothes and his rags would not have tempted even a camp thief. All he had left was a hat, but in the camps this was of no value. Curious as to what sort of poetry it might be, he accepted Arkhangelski's invitation.

The loft was lit by a candle. In the middle stood a barrel on which there was an opened can of food and some white bread. For the starving camp this was an unheard-of luxury. People lived on thin soup of which there was never enough—what they got for their morning meal would not have filled a glass. . . .

Sitting with the criminals was a man with a gray stubble of beard, wearing a yellow leather coat. He was reciting verse which L. rec­ognized. It was Mandelstam. The criminals offered him bread and the canned stuff, and he calmly helped himself and ate. Evidently he was only afraid to eat food given him by his jailers. He was listened to in complete silence and sometimes asked to repeat a poem.

After that evening L. always went up and spoke to M. if he saw him in the camp. L. easily got talking with him and soon noticed that M. was suffering from some kind of persecution mania or obsession. He was frightened not only of food, but also of being given "injec­tions." Even before he was arrested, we had heard stories about mys­terious injections or inoculations which were used in the Lubianka to break a person's will and make him say exactly what was required. There had been rumors of this kind ever since the mid-twenties, but whether there was anything in them, we did not, of course, know. Another thing L. noticed was that he was obsessed by the expression "socially dangerous" which always figured in the sentences pro­nounced by a Special Tribunal as grounds for exiling a prisoner. In his sick mind everything had got confused, and he imagined that they were going to give him an injection of rabies so that he really would be "dangerous" and have to be got rid of. He had forgotten that the "organs" didn't need to give people injections to do away with them.

L. knew nothing about psychiatry, but he very much wanted to help M. He didn't argue with him, but pretended he believed M. was deliberately spreading the story about being injected with rabies so that people would leave him alone. "But," L. said to him, "you don't want to frighten me away, do you?" The strategem worked and, to L.'s astonishment, there was no more talk about injections.

In the transit camp the prisoners were not taken out to work, but building materials were being unloaded nearby and stacked on a piece of land which had been assigned to the criminals. (According to the regulations, the "politicals," arrested under Article 58, were supposed to be kept apart from the rest, but because of the conges­tion in the camp the rule was not strictly observed.) Anybody who worked there got nothing out of it, not even a little extra bread, but even so there were some volunteers. These were people who were tired of being penned in with the milling crowd of their half-crazed fellow prisoners. They wanted to get out, if only into the less crowded territory next to the camp, where it was at least possible to walk around more freely. The younger prisoners particularly suf­fered from lack of exercise. Later on, in the regular camps, nobody would ever think of volunteering for any work—but here "in tran­sit" it was different.

Among the volunteers was L., a man who never lost heart. The worse the conditions, the stronger his will to live. He went around the camp with clenched teeth, stubbornly repeating to himself: "I can see everything and know everything, but even this is not enough to kill me." He was singlemindedly bent on one thing: not to allow himself to be destroyed, but to survive despite all the odds. I know this feeling very well myself, because I too have lived like that for almost thirty years, with clenched teeth. For this reason I have enormous respect for L.—I know what it cost to survive in ordinary conditions, let alone in the forced-labor camps where he lived throughout all those terrible years. He returned in 1956 with ТВ and a hopelessly damaged heart, but at least he came back sound in mind, and with a better memory than most people left at liberty can boast of.

L. took M. to help him. This was possible because there were no "work norms" in the transit camp and L. had no intention of over­exerting himself. They loaded a couple of rocks on a board with handles, carted them to a place a few hundred yards away, and sat down for a rest before going back for more. Once, resting by the pile of rocks, M. said: "My first book was Stone, and my last will be stone, too." This phrase had stuck in L.'s memory, though he did not know the names of M.'s books, and he interrupted his story at this point to ask me whether M.'s first book really had been called Stone. When I confirmed this to him, he was very pleased that the excellence of his memory was thus borne out once again.

Away from the crowd, in the comparative peace of this waste lot reserved for the criminals, both of them felt in better spirits. L.'s story explained the sentence in M.'s letter about going out to work. Everybody had assured me that people did not work in transit camps, and I had never been able to understand this part of M.'s letter until it was cleared up by L.

At the beginning of December there was an outbreak of spotted typhus, and L. lost track of M. The camp authorities responded en­ergetically to the outbreak by locking all the prisoners in their bar­racks and not letting them out—there was more room now because all the suspected plague cases had already been taken to a special building where they were kept in quarantine. In the mornings the barracks were opened so that the slop buckets could be emptied and everybody have his temperature taken by orderlies from the camp hospital. These preventive measures were, needless to say, quite in­effectual, and the disease spread rapidly. All those who caught it were placed in quarantine, about which there were terrifying rumors —it was thought that nobody came out alive.

Bunks in the camp barracks were in tiers of three, and L. had managed to get one in the middle. The lower ones were bad because of people milling about all the time, and in the upper ones it was intolerably hot and stuffy. After a few days L. began to shiver, and in order to get warmer he changed places with someone in an upper bunk. But he still went on shivering and he realized it was typhus. He was desperately anxious to avoid being taken off to the infirmary, and for a few days he managed to fool the orderlies by not letting them measure his temperature properly. But it kept going up and they soon took him away to quarantine. He was told that M. had been there a little while before. It appeared that he had not had typhus. The doctors, who were also prisoners, had treated him well and even given him a fur coat—they had a large stock of spare clothing because people were dying like flies. By this time M. was badly in need of it, since he had exchanged his leather coat for half a kilo of sugar—which had immediately been stolen from him. L. asked where M. had gone to, but nobody knew.

L. spent several days in quarantine before the doctors diagnosed typhus. He was then transferred to the infirmary. The transit camp turned out to have a perfectly decent and clean two-story hospital, to which all the typhus cases were sent. Here, for the first time in many months, L. slept in a proper bed. His illness brought him rest and a sweet feeling of comfort.

When he left the infirmary L. heard that M. had died. This must have been between December 1938 and April 1939—in April L. was transferred to a work camp. He met no witnesses of M.'s death and knew about it only from hearsay. L.'s story seems to bear out what Kazarnovski had told me—namely, that M. died early. I also con­clude from L.'s account that, since all typhus cases were taken to the infirmary, then M., who was found not to have it, must have died in quarantine. This means that he did not even die in his own bunk, covered by his own miserable convict's blanket.

There is nowhere I can make inquiries and nobody who will tell me anything. Who is likely to search through those grisly archives just for the sake of Mandelstam, when they won't even publish a volume of his work? Those who perished are lucky if they have been posthumously rehabilitated, or if, at any rate, their cases have been "discontinued for lack of evidence." Even here there is no "egalitarianism," and there are two types of rehabilitation—M. was given the second-class one. . . .

All I can do, therefore, is to gather what meager evidence there is and speculate about the date of his death. As I constantly tell my­self: the sooner he died, the better. There is nothing worse than a slow death. I hate to think that at the moment when my mind was set at rest on being told in the post office that he was dead, he may actually have been still alive and on his way to Kolyma. The date of death has not been established. And it is beyond my power to do anything more to establish it.

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APPENDIX

A. Notes on Persons Mentioned in the Text

Adalis (Efron), Adelina Yefimovna (1900- ): Poet and prose-writer.

Agranov, Yakov Savlovich (?—1939): Cheka investigator in the Kronstadt mutiny, the Tagantsev conspiracy, the Tambov uprising, the Kirov assassination, etc. Creator and chief of Litkontrol, a GPU department for the surveillance of writers. As deputy head of the NKVD under Yagoda and Yezhov, he was active in the preparation of the Moscow show trials of 1937-38. He was arrested and shot in 1939.

Akhmatova (Gorenko), Anna Andreyevna (1889-1966): Major Russian poet. Born in Odessa, she lived most of her life in St. Petersburg (Leningrad). Her verse was first published in 1911 and won imme­diate acclaim. Together with Nikolai Gumilev (whom she married in 1910), she became a leading figure in the Acmeist movement, with which Mandelstam was also associated. Her marriage to Gumilev ended in divorce, as did her second marriage to V. K. Shileiko, an Assyriologist. Her third husband, N. N. Punin, and her son, Lev Gumilev, were both arrested during the 1930's. She herself was never arrested, but for many years (1926-1940) she published scarcely any­thing and, like Mandelstam, was virtually proscribed. In 1946 she was scurrilously attacked (as a "half-nun, half-whore") by Stalin's chief lieutenant in cultural affairs, Andrei Zhdanov, and expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers. Subjected to intolerable pressures and threats of reprisals against her son, she wrote several poems in praise of Stalin in 1952. After the partial exposure of Stalin's crimes by Khrushchev in 1956 (when her son, like millions of others, was re­leased from a forced-labor camp) she began to publish again, and swiftly won recognition from the younger generation. But her long poem "Requiem," a dirge for her husband and son and all of Stalin's victims, has still not been published in the Soviet Union. Her "Poem Without a Hero," a remarkable attempt to illuminate Russia's destiny in the last half century, was published with some cuts in the Soviet collection of her poetry, Beg Vremeni (Moscow, 1965). The most complete collection of her work has appeared only abroad in the two-volume edition edited by Gleb Struve and Boris Filippov (Wash­ington, D.C., 1968). In the last years of her life Akhmatova was al­lowed to travel abroad for the first time since the Revolution. In 1964, at the age of seventy-five, she went to Sicily, where she received the Taormina literary prize. In 1965 she was awarded an honorary doc­torate by the University of Oxford. On her way home she visited France and Italy. As she makes clear in her short memoir on Mandel­stam (published in New York in 1965 in the literary almanac Voz- dushnye Puti [Aerial Ways'], edited by Roman Grynberg), her close friendship with him was based on the natural affinity of two great poets.

Altman, Natan Isayevich (1889- ): Painter of Akhmatova's portrait.

Amusin, Joseph Davidovich: Biblical and classical Hebrew scholar. He has published articles in Soviet scholarly journals and a book on the Dead Sea Scrolls (Moscow, i960).

Anderson, Marian (1902- ): American contralto. The sound of her voice inspired Mandelstam to write a poem in 1936.

Andreyev, Andrei Andreyevich (1895- ): Member of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party, 1920-61. Deputy chair­man of the Council of Ministers, 1946-53.

Andronikov (Andronikashvili), lrakli Luarsabovich (1908- ): Liter­ary historian and critic, well known at present for his newspaper and television causeries on literary topics.

Annenski, Innokenti Fedorovich (1856-1909): Classical scholar and lyric poet.

Ardov, Victor Yefimovich (1900- ): Writer of humorous stories, film scenarios and satirical sketches for the variety stage.

Aseyev, Nikolai Nikolayevich (1889-1963): Futurist poet, influenced by Khlebnikov and Mayakovski; a member of LEF. He was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1941. After Stalin's death, he helped some of the younger poets, but was very conformist in his public utterances.

Averbakh, Leopold Leopoldovich (1903-?): Literary critic, militant pro­ponent of the concept of "proletarian" literature, and one of the leaders of RAPP. As such, he was virtually dictator of Soviet literary affairs from about 1927 until his downfall in 1932, when Stalin abruptly changed the policy in literature to one of support for all writers, whatever their background, who were willing to accept the Party line without question. Averbakh (who was married to Yagoda's sister) disappeared during the purges.

Awakum, the Archpriest (c. 1620-1681): Leader of the "Old Believers"— schismatics who refused to accept the changes in Russian Orthodox ritual introduced by the Patriarch Nikon. Awakum's Life (1672-73) is a remarkable account of his exile to Siberia with his wife.

Babel, Isaac Emanuilovich (1894-1941?): Great Soviet short-story writer, noted for his Red Cavalry (1923). Like Mandelstam, Akhmatova and Pasternak, he was largely reduced to silence in the 1930's (at the First Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934 he said: "I have invented a new genre—the genre of silence"). He was arrested in 1939, and fifteen years afterward, in 1954, his widow was informed in an official notification that the case against him had been "discontinued for lack of a corpus delicti." In a certificate issued at the same time, the date of his death was given as March 17,1941.

Bagritski (Dziubin), Eduard Georgievich (1895-1934): Epic and lyric poet, translator of Burns, Rimbaud and others. After serving in the Red Army, he organized the first "proletarian" literary circle in Odessa, but moved to Moscow in 1925. He was a member of RAPP. Seva (Vsevolod Eduardovich) Bagritski (1922-1942), son of Eduard Bagritski, was also a poet.

Bakh, Alexei Nikolayevich (1857-1946): Biochemist. He was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1941.

Balmont, Konstantin Dmitrievich (1867-1943): Poet who enjoyed a con­siderable vogue at the turn of the century. He emigrated after the Revolution and died in Paris.

Baltrushaitis, Yurgis Kazimirovich (1873-1944): Russian and Lithuanian poet associated with the Symbolists. From 1921 to 1939 he was the Lithuanian ambassador in Moscow. He died in Paris.

Baratynski, Evgeni Abramovich (1800-1844) ): Major poet, contemporary of Pushkin.

Bedny, Demian (Yefim A. Pridvorov) (1883-1945): A somewhat crude versifier of great vigor who enjoyed a vogue in the 1920's and was noted particularly for his anti-religious satires. But in 1936 he in­curred Stalin's displeasure by writing an opera libretto which made fun of Russia's past.

Belinski, Vissarion Grigorievich (1811-1848): Radical publicist and liter­ary critic.

Bely, Andrei (Boris Nikolayevich Bugayev) (1880-1934): Major symbol­ist poet, novelist and critic. Like other Symbolists, he was at first inclined to see the October Revolution as an event of mystical sig­nificance—indeed, as the second coming of Christ. He was the leading Russian disciple of Rudolf Steiner.

Berdiayev, Nikolai Alexandrovich (1874-1948): Famous Russian philoso­pher and religious thinker. An ex-Marxist, he contributed to Vekhi (The Landmarks), a collection of essays (1909) in which leading Russian intellectuals critically reappraised the role of the intelligentsia, rejecting its spirit of maximalist radicalism. Berdiayev was a leading figure in the movement to revive philosophical and lay theological thinking in Russia (e.g., in the Free Philosophical Society). In 1922 he was expelled from Russia with other anti-Bolshevik intellectuals, and settled in Paris. The work referred to by Mrs. Mandelstam as Self-Knowledge has been translated into English under the tide Dream and Reality.

Bernstein, Sergei Ignatievich (1892- ): A leading linguist with a spe­cial interest in phonetics. During the 1920's he made phonograph recordings of Blok, Mayakovski, Yesenin and Mandelstam. His brother Alexander (Sania), born in 1900, is a writer of popular books on literature.

Bezymenski, Alexander Ilyich (1898- ): Soviet poet noted for his political conformism. He was a leading member of RAPP.

Blagoi, Dmitri Dmitrievich (1893- ): Soviet literary historian.

Bliumkin, Yakov Grigorievich (iS<)z}-i<)i<)): Left Social Revolutionary who assassinated the German ambassador, Count Mirbach, in 1918. Sentenced to death, he was pardoned and became an official in the Cheka and a follower of Trotski. He was executed in 1929 for carry­ing a message from Trotski in Turkey for the opposition.

Blok, Alexander Alexandrovich (1880-1921): The leading Symbolist poet. In the first years after the Revolution he was very active in the various cultural enterprises started by Maxim Gorki under the aegis of Anatol Lunacharski, the People's Commissar for Enlightenment.

Blok, Georgi Petrovich (1888-1962): Cousin of Alexander Blok. Editor and publisher.

Borodin, Sergei Petrovich (1902- ): Writer of historical novels, the most famous of which is Dmitri Donskoi. Until 1941 he wrote under the pseudonym Amir Sargidzhan.

Borodayevski, Valerian В.: A poet who wrote in Apollon.

Brik, Osip Maximovich (1888-1945): Friend and associate of Mayakovski. Originally associated with the Formalists, he later helped to create LEF. His wife, Lib*, was the inspiration for many of Mayakovski's love poems. She is the sister of Elsa Triolet (died 1970), the wife of the French Communist poet Louis Aragon.

Briusov, Valeri Yakovlevich (1873-1924): Major poet, editor, and theo­retician of the Symbolist movement. He joined the Communist Party in 1919.

Brodski, David Grigorievich (1895-1966); Poet and translator from French (Barbier, Hugo, Rimbaud), German (Goethe, Schiller), Yiddish (Perets Markish) and other languages.

Brodski, Joseph Alexandrovich (1940- ): One of the first poets of the young generation in Russia. A protege of Akhmatova, he was exiled to the Archangel region in 1964 as "a parasite," but was allowed to return to Leningrad the following year after a worldwide outcry. Scarcely any of his work has yet been published in the Soviet Union, but much of it has appeared abroad in Russian and other languages.

Bruni, Lev Alexandrovich: Russian artist, descended from an Italian painter who emigrated to Russia in the early nineteenth century. He painted a portrait of Mandelstam.

Bukharin, Nikolai Ivanovich (1888-1938): Member of the Bolshevik Party from 1907, of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party from 1917 to 1934, and of the Politburo from 1919 to 1929. Editor of Izvestia, 1934-37. Expelled from the Party and arrested in 1937, he was the principal figure in the last great Moscow show trial in 1938, at which he was sentenced to be shot.

Bulgakov, Mikhail Afanasievich (1891-1940): Outstanding novelist, au­thor of The Master and Margarita, which was not published till 1967, twenty-seven years after his death. His widow, Elena Sergeyevna, still lives in Moscow.

Bulgarin, Faddei (1789-1859): Writer best remembered as a police in­former during the reign of Nicholas I. ,

Chaadayev, Peter Yakovlevich (1794-1856): Author of Philosophical Letters, which condemned Russia's cultural backwardness and called for her integration into the European tradition. The publication of the "First Letter" in 1836 led Nicholas I to declare him insane and to have him placed under house arrest for eighteen months. Mandel- stam's essay on him appeared in the journal Apollon in 1915.

Charents (Sogononian), Egishe (1897-1937): Armenian poet who trans­lated Pushkin, Mayakovski, Gorki into Armenian.

Chechanovski, Mark Osipovich: Editor and translator.

Cherniak, Robert Mikhailovich (1900-1932): Graphic artist.

Chicherin, Georgi Vasilievich (1872-1936): People's Commissar (i.e., Minister) of Foreign Affairs, 1918-30.

Chorene, Moses of: Reputed author of a fifth-century history of Armenia.

Chorny, Sasha (Alexander Mikhailovich Glikberg) (1880-1932): Tal­ented author of satirical verse and stories. He emigrated in 1920 and eventually settled in France.

Chukovski, Kornei lvanovich (1882-1969) Eminent Russian man of let­ters. His son, Nikolai Korneyevich (1905-1965), was a novelist.

Courtenay, Jan Ignacy Niecislaw, Baudoin de (1845-1929): Leading Slavic philologist, professor at St. Petersburg University.

Denikin, Anton lvanovich (1872-1947): Commander-in-chief of the White Army in the South until he was succeeded by Wrangel in 1920. He died in the U.S.A.

Derzhavin, Gavriil Romanovich (1743-1816): Noted Russian poet.

Diki, Alexei Denisovich (1895-1955): Well-known actor and producer.

Dobroliubov, Alexander Mikhailovich (1876-?): Early Symbolist poet and mystical anarchist. He probably died during the Civil War.

Dobroliubov, Nikolai Alexandrovich (1836-1861): Radical publicist.

Dolmatovski, Yevgeni Aronovich (1915- ): Soviet poet noted for his political conformism.

Dombrovski, Yuri Osipovich (1910- ): Soviet writer who spent many years in a forced-labor camp. The novel to which Mrs. Mandelstam alludes is The Keeper of Antiquities.

Dzerzhinski, Felix Edmundovich (1877-1926): First head of the Cheka.

Efros, Abram Markovich (1888-1954): Noted art historian and translator.

Ehrenburg, Ilia Grigorievich (1891-1967): Famous Soviet novelist and journalist. After a youthful involvement with Bolshevik activities in 1906, he was imprisoned briefly. In 1908, he went abroad and lived in Paris from 1909 to 1917. He returned to Russia as an anti-Bolshevik in 1917, went back to Paris in 1921, and after some wavering became increasingly pro-Soviet. Until 1941, however, he managed to live mainly abroad (as European correspondent of lzvestia), making only brief visits to the Soviet Union. Notable among his vast output of novels, stories, essays, etc., are The Extraordinary Adventures of Julio Jurenito (1921), The Fall of Paris (1942) and The Thaw (1954). His memoirs were published in the mid-1960's and, despite the inevitable reticences, they give a fascinating picture of the fate of the Russian intelligentsia in Soviet times. His account of Mandelstam contains some inaccuracies (including the story, described as a legend by Mrs. Mandelstam, that he read Petrarch by a campfire in the days before his death in Siberia). A sardonic, gifted, and basically am­bivalent figure, Ehrenburg did much after Stalin's death to promote the cultural values destroyed by the regime to which he had long paid lip-service as a novelist, journalist, and public figure. His novel The Thaw was of great importance as the first breach to be made in Stalinist mythology, and in his memoirs and essays after Stalin's death (such as those on Chekhov and Stendhal) he championed freedom of expression in literature and art.

Eichenbaum, Boris Mikhailovich (1886-1959): Scholar and literary critic, once a leading member of the Formalist school. He was associated with LEF.

Ekster (Grigorovich), Alexandra Alexandrovna (1884-1949): Artist and set designer. A pupil of Leger, she was active in Russian avant-garde circles, painting in a Cubist style, and illustrated books by the Fu­turists. After the Revolution she worked for the Kamerny Theater in Moscow, but emigrated from Russia some time in the 1920's.

Elsberg, Yakov: Soviet literary scholar, once secretary to Lev Kamenev, the Old Bolshevik purged by Stalin. In 1962 there was an attempt to have Elsberg expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers for his com­plicity as a secret police agent in the arrest and exile of fellow writers under Stalin, but apparently nothing came of this move (or he was speedily reinstated).

Erdman, Nikolai Robertovich (1902- ): Playwright best known for his comedy The Mandate (1925), which was staged by Meyerhold. He was first arrested in 1931 and then again in the late 1930's.

Fadeyev (Bulyga), Alexander Alexandrovich (1901-1956): Soviet novel­ist. Author of The Rout (1927) and The Young Guard (1945), both held up in the Stalin years as models of "socialist realism"—though Stalin made him revise The Young Guard (revised version: 1951). From 1946 to 1953 he was Secretary General of the Union of Soviet Writers. He committed suicide in 1956.

Fedin, Konstantin Alexandrovich (1892- ): Leading "Fellow Trav­eler" novelist. Fedin has been secretary of the Union of Soviet Writers (in succession to Surkov) since 1959.

Fety Afanasi Afanasievich (1820-1892): Lyric poet.

Filippov (Filistinski), Boris Andreyevich (1905- ): Emigre editor and poet. Collaborated with Gleb Struve in editing the works of Mandel­stam (Chekhov Publishing House, New York, 1955, and Inter-Lan­guage Literary Associates, New York, three volumes, 1964-69).

Florenski, Father Pavel Alexandrovich (1882-1952): Originally a mathe­matician, appointed as a lecturer in philosophy at the Moscow Theo­logical Academy in 1908, and ordained a priest in 1911. The publica­tion in 1914 of The Pillar and Foundation of Truth was a landmark in the renaissance of Russian religious thinking. He was deported to Siberia after the Revolution.

Furmanov, Dmitri Andreyevich (1891-1926): Soviet writer famous for

his novel Chapayev, about the Civil War. He served as secretary of the Moscow branch of RAPP.

Gapon, Georgi Apollonovich (1870-1906): Russian priest who in 1903 organized a Workers' Association with quasi-official support. He led the march to the Winter Palace on Bloody Sunday, January 9, 1905.

Garin, Erast Pavlovich (1902- ): Well-known actor and producer, once an associate of Meyerhold.

Gerstein, Emma: Literary scholar, close friend of the Mandelstams and Anna Akhmatova; author of Sudba Lermontova (Lermontov's Fate) (Moscow, 1964).

Ginzburg, Grigori Romanovich (1904- ): Pianist and professor at the Moscow Conservatory.

Ginzburg, Leo Moritsevich (1901- ): Conductor.

Gippius, Vladimir Vasilievich (1876-1941): Poet and literary historian; director of the Tenishev school which Mandelstam attended before the Revolution.

Gladkov, Fedor V. (1883-1958): "Proletarian" writer, famous for his novel Cement.

Gorbunov, Nikolai Petrovich (1892-?): Executive secretary of the Council of People's Commissars; vice-president of the Lenin Acad­emy of Agriculture.

Gorki, Maxim (Alexei Maximovich Peshkov) (1868-1936): Major Rus­sian writer, friend of Lenin (and, later, Stalin); editor of Novaya Zhizn (New Life), which opposed the October Revolution, until it was closed down on Lenin's orders in 1918. Gorki did much to help and give material aid to intellectuals during the Civil War. He emi­grated in 1921, but returned in 1929 to become the chief exponent of "socialist realism." After his death in 1936, Yagoda and Professor D. Pletnev were charged by Stalin with his "medical murder."

Grigoriev, Apollon Alexandrovich (1822-1864): Poet and critic.

Gronski, Ivan Mikhailovich (1894- ): Journalist and critic. He was editor of Izvestia, 1928-34.

Gumilev, Lev Nikolayevich (1911- ): Son of Nikolai Gumilev and Akhmatova; historian and Orientalist. He was arrested first in 1934 after the assassination of Kirov, and again in 1937. During the war he was released and served at the front. In 1949 he was arrested again and was released in 1956.

Gumilev, Nikolai Stepanovich (1886-1921): Acmeist poet and co-founder of the Poets' Guild. Before the First World War he traveled to Abyssinia. His narrative and lyric poetry and his tales were influ­enced by his travels, his distinguished military service in the war and his monarchist beliefs. After the Revolution he did translations for Gorki's World Literature Publishing House and taught poetry in the House of Arts. He was shot in August 1921 after he proudly confessed his involvement in the Tagantsev affair, a rather confused anti-Bolshevik conspiracy. His poetry is popular with Soviet youth, though he still has not been rehabilitated. He was the first husband of Ahkmatova.

Gusev (Drabkin), Sergei Ivanovich (1874-1933): Prominent Party official.

He was head of the Press Department of the Central Committee, ⁱ9²5~33*

Herzen, Alexander Ivanovich (1812-1870): Famous Russian publicist and editor of Kolokol (The Bell), which he brought out in London after his emigration in 1847.

Ivanov, Georgi Vladimirovich (1894-1958): Acmeist poet who emigrated to Paris after the Revolution. His book of memoirs, Petersburg Winters, was first published in Paris in 1928.

Ivanov у Viacheslav Ivanovich (1866-1949): Leading Symbolist poet and classical scholar. He emigrated to Rome in 1924.

Kablukovy Sergei Platonovich: Secretary of the Religious Philosophical Society in St. Petersburg.

Kachalov (Shverubovich), Vasili Ivanovich (1875-1948): Famous actor of the Moscow Art Theater.

Kalinin, Mikhail Ivanovich (1875-1946): Member of the Politburo from 1925; chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, 1912-46, and hence titular head of state.

Kamenev (Rosenfeld), Lev Borisov'tch (1883-1936): Old Bolshevik, mem­ber of the Central Committee from 1917 and one of the ruling Party triumvirate (with Stalin and Zinoviev) after Lenin's death. Arrested in 1934, he was executed after his confession at a show trial in 1936.

Katanian, Ruben Pavlovich (1881-?): Assistant Procurator General of the U.S.S.R., 1933-37.

Katayev, Valentin Petrovich (1897- ): Prominent Soviet novelist. One of the leading "Fellow Travelers" in the 1920's. His play The Squaring of the Circle was often produced in the West in the 1930's. After Stalin's death, as editor of the literary monthly Yunost (Youth), he encouraged new talent. His semi-fictional reminis­cences, Holy Well (published in English translation in 1967), con­tain his version of the conversation described by Mrs. Mandelstam on p. 280. His brother was the satirist Evgeni Petrov.

Kaverin (Zilber), Veniamin Alexandrovich (1902- ): Soviet novelist who was a leading member of the Serapion Brothers in the 1920's. In recent years, since Stalin's death, he has played a courageous part in the restoration of cultural values. In 1956 he was one of the editors of the almanac Literary Moscow, which was a landmark in the movement for greater freedom of expression.

Kazin, Vasili (1898-?): A "proletarian" poet.

Khardzhiev, Nikolai Ivanovich: Soviet literary scholar and editor. A friend of the Mandelstams.

Khlebnikov, Velimir (Victor Vladimirovich) (1885-1922): Futurist poet noted for his linguistic experimentation. He died of malnutrition in 1922. Some of his poetry has now been reprinted after many years of suppression.

Khodasevich, Vladislav Felitsianovich (1886-1939): Poet and critic. He emigrated in 1922 and died in Paris.

Kirov (Kostrikov), Sergei Mironovich (1886-1934): Party leader of

Leningrad. His assassination in December 1934, possibly with the complicity of Stalin, was used as an excuse to step up the tempo of the purges and mass terror.

Kirsanov, Semion Isaakovich (1906- ): Poet, translator and member of LEF, influenced in his early period by Mayakovski.

Kluyev, Nikolai Alexandrovich (1887-1937): Peasant poet. He was ar­rested in the i93o's and died in Siberia.

Klychkov (Leshenkov), Sergei Antonovich (1889-1937): Peasant poet and novelist, arrested in 1937.

Kochetov, Vsevolod Anisimovich (1912- ): Novelist who in recent years has become the spokesman of extreme anti-liberal forces in Soviet literature. Two of his novels, The Brothers Yershov (1957) and What Do You Want? (1969), are lampoons on the liberal intel­ligentsia. Kochetov is editor of the monthly Oktiabr (October).

Koltsov, Mikhail Yefimovich (1898-1942): Soviet journalist, correspon­dent and editor of Pravda who became famous for his dispatches during the Spanish civil war. Elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences in 1938, he was arrested that same year, and presumably died in a forced-labor camp.

Komarovski, Count Vasili Alexeyevich (1881-1914): Minor poet con­nected with the Symbolist movement.

Konevskoi, Ivan (1. 1. Oreus) (1877-1901): Symbolist poet of Swedish origin.

Kornilov, Boris Petrovich (1907-1938): Soviet poet influenced by Ye- senin; a member of RAPP. He was arrested during the purges.

Kossior, Stanislav Vikentievich (1889-1939): Old Bolshevik, member of the Politburo from 1930; First Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party, 1928-38. He was arrested in 1938 and executed in 1939.

Kudasheva, Maria (Maya) Pavlovna: Daughter of a Russian father and a French mother; a friend of many Moscow writers. After corre­sponding with Romain Rolland, she moved to Switzerland and mar­ried him there. In 1937 visited Moscow with him.

Kuzmin, Mikhail Alexeyevich (1875-1936): Poet whose work influenced the transition from Symbolism to Acmeism.

Lakhuti, Abolgasem Akhmedzade (1887-1957): Persian revolutionary and poet. He left Iran for Turkey in 1917, and in 1922 emigrated to the U.S.S.R., where he held positions in the government of Tajikistan and in the Union of Soviet Writers.

Lakoba, Nestor lvanovich (1893-1936): Georgian Old Bolshevik; presi­dent of the executive committee of Abkhazia (an autonomous region of Georgia). Posthumously he was accused of a plot on Stalin's life.

Lapin, Boris Matveyevich (1905-1941): Soviet writer and translator; son- in-law of Ilia Ehrenburg. He was killed at the front as a war cor­respondent.

Lelevich, Grigori (Labori Gilelevich Kalmonson) (1901-1945): Soviet poet and critic. A member of RAPP until his expulsion in 1926 for opposing collaboration with the "Fellow Travelers." Arrested during the purges, he died in a forced-labor camp.

Leonov, Leonid Maximovich (1899- ): Major Soviet novelist and playwright. A complex figure who successfully adapted to the twists and turns of Party policy while struggling to retain some integrity as a writer.

Lermontov, Mikhail Yurievich (1814-1841): Great Russian poet and author of a famous novel, A Hero of Our Times. He was killed in a duel at the age of twenty-six.

Lezhnev (Altshuler), Isai Grigorievich (1891-1955): Editor and journal­ist. Between 1922 and 1926 he edited Novaya Rossia (New Russia) and Rossia (Russia), for which Mandelstam wrote. In 1926 he was expelled from the Party (he had joined the Bolsheviks before the Revolution) and was deported from the country by a decision of the GPU. In 1930 he "repented" and returned to the U.S.S.R., where his Party membership was restored. During 1935-39 be headed the art and literature section of Pravda.

Liashko, (Liashchenko), Nikolai N. (1884-1953): Novelist and short-story writer.

Linde, Fedor F. (?—1917): Bolshevik philosopher, mathematician and military commissar. He led the Finnish Guard Reserve regiment during the April crisis in 1917, and later that year was killed on the southwestern front by soldiers under his command. His death is described by Boris Pasternak in Dr. Zhivago, where Linde appears as "Gints."

Livshitz, Benedikt Konstantinovich (1887-1939): Poet associated with the Futurists; translator of French prose and poetry. In his memoirs, Polutoraglazy Strelets (The One-and-a-Half-Eyed Archer, Moscow, *933)> he brilliantly describes the origins of the Futurist movement. He was arrested in the purges—apparently having been accused of complicity in the assassination of the head of the Cheka, Uritski, in 1919—but has now been posthumously rehabilitated.

Lominadze, Besso (>-1934): Comintern official and member of the Cen­tral Committee. He was charged in 1930 with organizing an "anti- Party Left-Right bloc," and in 1934 he committed suicide.

Lozina-Lozinski, Alexei Konstantinovich (1888-1916): Poet.

Lozinski, Mikhail Leonidovich (1886-1955): Poet and translator from Spanish, French, English and Italian; one of the founders (with Nikolai Gumilev) of the Poets' Guild. He was awarded a Stalin prize in 1946 for his translation of Dante's Divine Comedy.

Lugovskoi, Vladimir Alexandrovich (1901-1957): Soviet poet. He served in the Red Army until 1924. His first poetry was published in 1925. During World War II he was a correspondent.

Luppol, Ivan Kapitonovich (1896-1943): Marxist literary historian, critic and editor. He headed the Gorki Institute of World Literature, 1935-40, and was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences in 1939. Arrested in 1940, he died in a forced-labor camp and has been posthumously rehabilitated.

Lysenko, Trofim Denisovich (1898- ): Biologist and member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. With the support of Stalin, he tried to

destroy all his opponents among the Soviet geneticists. He is now discredited.

Maikov, Apollon Nikolayevich (1821-1897): Poet.

Makovski, Sergei Konstantinovich (1877-1962): Son of the painter Kon- stantin Makovski, he wrote poetry, organized exhibitions of avant- garde Russian art, founded and edited the journal Apollon (in which Mandelstam published some of his early work) from 1909 to 1917. He emigrated to Prague and later to Paris. His memoir of Mandel­stam was published in Portrety sovremennikov (Portraits of Con­temporaries, New York, 1955). Since Mandelstam saw this before his death, it must have come out in an earlier version before the war, perhaps as an article in an emigre journal in Paris.

Malkin, Boris Fedorovich (1890-1942): Editor.

Markish, Perets Davidovich (1895-1952): Leading Yiddish poet, play­wright and novelist. A member of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Commit­tee, he was arrested in 1948 and executed in 1952 together with other Yiddish writers.

Marshak, Samuil Yakovlevich (1887-1964): Translator (Shakespeare, Heine, Burns), poet and children's writer. In 1924-25 he edited a magazine especially for children, Novy Robinson (The New Robin* son [Crusoe]), in which some verse and translations by Mandelstam appeared. In 1925 and 1926, as head of the children's literature section of the State Publishing House, he published two books of verse for children by Mandelstam, Balloons and Two Tramcars. Though Marshak was noted for his political adaptability, he showed liberal tendencies after Stalin's death.

Mayakovski, Vladimir Vladimirovich (1893-1930): The leading figure in Russian Futurism. In addition to his vast output of poetry, he wrote two plays, The Bedbug and The Bathhouse, and edited the journal LEF (1923-25). Under attack by RAPP, involved in difficult love affairs and probably disillusioned by post-revolutionary reality (as one can judge from the two plays), he committed suicide in 1930. In 1935 Stalin said of him: "Mayakovski was and remains the best and the most talented poet of our Soviet epoch."

Mei, Lev Alexandrovich (1822-1862): Minor poet.

Meyerhold, Vsevolod Emilievich (1874-1940): Actor and producer. Prior to the Revolution he was associated with the Moscow Art Theater, and the Maryinski and Alexandrinski theaters in St. Petersburg. Joined the Communist Party in 1918. He directed the Theater of the Revolution until 1924, and then created his own theater based on his "bio-mechanical" system of acting. His theater was closed in 1938. Arrested in 1939 (after a defiant public refusal to accept the doctrine of "socialist realism" in art), he died in prison in 1940. Though he has now been rehabilitated as a person, there is still considerable opposition to his innovations in stagecraft.

Migai, Sergei Ivanovich (1888-1959): Singer of the Bolshoi Theater.

Mikhoels (Vovsi), Solomon Mikhailovich (1890-1948): Foremost Yid­dish actor and director. Creator of the State Jewish Theater in Mos­cow, which was closed down in 1949 during an officially inspired campaign of anti-Semitism. The previous year Pravda had published a fulsome obituary of Mikhoels after his "sudden death." At the time rumors were circulated that he had been run over by a drunken truck driver, but it is now known that he was killed by the secret police on Stalin's orders (see Svetlana Alliluyeva: Only One Year). Evidently Stalin needed to get him out of the way before proceeding to the destruction of all Yiddish cultural facilities. His brother, Vovsi, was one of the doctors accused in 1952 of trying to assassinate Soviet leaders by medical malpractice.

Mikoyan, Anastas lvanovich (1895- )^: Member of the Politburo from 1935 and chairman of the Supreme Soviet, 1964-67.

Mirbach, Wilhelm (Count von Mirbach-Harff) (1871-1918): German ambassador to Soviet Russia after the signing of the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty in 1918. He was assassinated by Bliumkin and Nikolai Andreyev, Left Social-Revolutionaries, on July 6,1918.

Mirski, Dmitri Petrovich (Prince Sviatopolk-Mirski) (1890-1939?): Gifted literary historian and critic who lectured at London Univer­sity, 1922-32. His History of Russian Literature remains the best work of its kind in English. After joining the British Communist Party, he returned to Russia in 1932, became a member of the Union of Soviet Writers, published articles on literature and gave talks on Moscow radio. He was arrested during the purges and died in a forced-labor camp.

Molotov (Scriabin), Viacheslav Mikhailovich (1890- ): Old Bol­shevik, Soviet Foreign Minister, 1939-56. Despite his devotion to Stalin, he is believed to have been out of favor in 1936 and again in 1953 (in 1948 his wife was arrested and spent some years in a camp). Molotov was finally removed from power by Khrushchev in 1957 as a member of the so-called "anti-Party group." He now lives in retire­ment in Moscow.

Morozov, Alexander Antonovich (1906- ): Literary scholar and translator.

Morozov, Pavel ("Pavlik") (1918-1932): Village boy who during collec­tivization denounced his father as a person of "kulak" sympathies. His father was shot and Pavel was then himself killed by a group of peasants led by his uncle. During the Stalin years Pavlik Morozov was held up tc Soviet youth as a model who did not hesitate to denounce his father in the interests of the State. Books and poems were written about him, and there were many statues of him in public places.

Mravian, Askanaz Artemievich (1886-1929): Armenian revolutionary and literary figure. A Bolshevik from 1905, he was Armenian Com­missar of Foreign Affairs, 1920-21, and was appointed Commissar of Education in 1923. He wrote articles about Armenian classical authors.

Narbut, Vladimir lvanovich (1888-1944): Minor Acmeist poet who joined the Bolsheviks, but was expelled from the Party in 1928. He was editor-in-chief of the State publishing concern Land and Factory

(ZDF). Arrested during the purges, he has now been posthumously rehabilitated. Sima Narbut was his wife.

Nesterov, Mikhail Vasilievich (1862-1942): Religious painter who adapted to the Soviet regime.

Nikulin, Lev Veniaminovich (1891-1967): Soviet novelist suspected of having denounced other Soviet writers, notably Isaac Babel.

Nilender, Vladimir Ottonovich (1883-1965): Poet and translator asso­ciated with the Symbolists.

Orlov, Vladimir Nikolayevich (1908- ): Literary scholar; editor-in- chief of Poets' Library.

Oshanin, Lev Ivanovich (1912- ): Soviet poet and playwright.

Otsup, Nikolai Avdeyevich (1894-1958): Acmeist poet. In 1923 he emi­grated to Paris.

Parnok: a character in Mandelstam's "Egyptian Stamp" who personifies the raznochinets ("upstart intellectual") and is the author's "double." In real life the prototype of Parnok was a minor poet called Valentin Yakovlevich Parnakh who lived in Paris in the early 1920's. From a portrait of him by Picasso it is clear that he bore a striking physical resemblance to Mandelstam. In 1926 Parnakh published an article in the American Jewish Menorah Journal in which he wrote about Mandelstam (as well as Pasternak and others).

Pasternak, Boris Leonidovich (1890-1960): Poet and author of the novel Dr. "Zhivago.

Paustovski, Konstantin Georgievich (1892-1968): Novelist and play­wright. His memoirs have been translated into English under the title Story of a Life. His speech in defense of Dudintsev's novel Not by Bread Alone (October 22, 1956) was a courageous indictment of bureaucracy and philistinism.

Pavlenko, Peter Andreyevich (1899-1951): Highly orthodox Soviet nov­elist who was awarded a Stalin Prize for his violently anti-Western Happiness (1947). He wrote the scenario for the film Alexander Nevski.

Peshkova, Ekaterina Pavlovna (1876-1965): Legal wife of Maxim Gorki, from whom she was amicably separated. After the Revolution she founded the "Political Red Cross," a relief organization for political prisoners of all types. Because of Gorki's immense prestige it was tolerated by the Soviet secret police and allowed to exist in increas­ingly nominal fashion until it was closed down in 1939. Its premises were within a stone's throw of the Lubianka, the headquaters of the secret police in Moscow.

Petliura, Semion Vasilievich (1879-1926): Head of the nationalist anti- Bolshevik Ukrainian government (the Directory), 1918-20. He was assassinated in Paris in 1926.

Petrov (Kateyev), Evgeni Petrovich (1903-1942): Brother of Valentin Katayev; co-author with Ilf (Ilia Fainzilberg) of The Twelve Chairs and The Golden Calf, comic novels which still enjoy immense popu­larity in the Soviet Union. The two novels are about a confidence

trickster from Odessa, Ostap Bender, and contain many daring satirical sketches of life in the Soviet Union during NEP.

Piast (Pestovski), Vladimir Alexeyevich (1886-1940): Poet and trans­lator. A friend of Alexander Blok.

Pilniak (Vogau), Boris Andreyevich (1894-1937?): Prominent Soviet novelist. In his Tale of the Extinguished Moon (1927) he hinted that Stalin had killed the Red Army Commander Frunze by making him have an unnecessary operation. In 1929 he was chairman of the board of the Union of Writers, but was removed from this position after a violent campaign in the press because of the publication of his short novel Mahogany in Berlin. This attack on Pilniak signaled the beginning of Stalin's total subjugation of Soviet literature to his own political purposes. Pilniak was arrested in 1937, accused of spying for the Japanese and was either shot immediately or died in a camp.

Pisarev, Dmitri Ivanovich (1840-1868): Radical publicist noted for his extreme utilitarian approach to culture.

Podvoiski, Nikolai Ilyich (1890-1948): Organizer of the Red Guards, 1917. He was active in the military leadership of the Civil War and was a member of the Central Committee.

Polezhayev, Alexander Ivanovich (1805-1838): Poet.

Polivanov, E. D.: Leningrad philologist associated with the Formalist school of literary criticism.

Polonski, Yakov Petrovich (1819-1898): Poet.

Postupalski, Igor Stefanovich (1907- ): Poet, translator and critic.

Prishvin, Mikhail Mikhailovich (1873-1954): Novelist and short-story writer distinguished by his love of nature.

Prokofiev, Alexander Andreyevich (1900- ): Poet noted for his political conformism. Secretary of the Leningrad section of the Union of Soviet Writers, he was awarded a Stalin Prize and two Orders of Lenin.

Punin, Nikolai Nikolayevich (1888-1953): Art historian and critic asso­ciated with Makovski's Apollon. He was the third husband of Anna Akhmatova. During the purges he was arrested and sent to a forced- labor camp.

Rakovski, Christian Georgievich (1873-1941): Old Bolshevik. Sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment at the Bukharin show trial in 1938.

Raskolnikov (Ilyin), Fedor Fedorovich (1892-1939): Deputy People's Commissar for the Navy in 1918; Soviet ambassador to Afganistan, 1922-23. He defected while Soviet ambassador in Bulgaria in 1937 and committed suicide in Paris in 1939.

Reisner, Larisa Mikhailovna (1897-1928): Bolshevik-heroine of the Revolution, author of Front (1922); wife of Fedor Raskolnikov. After divorcing him in 1922, she became a close friend of Karel Radek. According to Trotski, she had "the beauty of an Olympian goddess, a subtle mind and the courage of a warrior."

Rozhdestvenski, Vsevolod Alexandrovich (1895- ): Poet and trans­lator.

Rustaveli, Shota (c. 1200): Poet, author of the Georgian national epic, The Knight in the Tiger's Skin.

Sargidzhan, Amir: see Borodin, Sergei Petrovich.

Seifullina, Lidia Nikolayevna (1889-1954): Novelist and short-story writer well known in the 1920's for her realistic descriptions of Rus­sian peasant life.

Selvinski, Ilia Lvovich (1899- )^: Soviet poet.

Semashko, Nikolai Alexandrovich (1874-1949): First People's Commissar of Health, and later a member of the Soviet Executive Committee.

Severianin (Lotarev), Igor Vasilievich (1887-1941): Poet noted for his flamboyance and verbal extravagance; leader of the "Ego- Futurists." He emigrated to Estonia in 1919. After the Soviet occupa­tion of Estonia in 1940, he managed to publish in some Soviet maga­zines. He died in December 1941 under German occupation.

Shaginian, Marietta Sergeyevna (1888- ): Veteran Soviet novelist and (before the Revolution) a minor poet on the fringes of the Sym­bolist movement. During the 1920's she was known mainly for her attempt to write thrillers and detective fiction in Western style, de­cried at the time as "Red Pinkertonism."

Shalamov, Varlam Tikhonovich (1907- ): Poet and prose writer who spent seventeen years in a forced-labor camp in Kolyma. His Tales of Kolyma have been published in the West in Russian and French.

Shchegolev, Pavel Pavlovich (1902- ): Historian, professor at Lenin­grad University, who helped Alexei Tolstoy with the research for his historical novels. (Probably he is the man referred to on p. 335.)

Shchepkin, Mikhail Semionovich (1788-1863): Famous Russian actor.

Shcherbakov, Alexander Sergeyevich (1901-1945): Veteran Communist official and associate of Zhdanov. He was appointed secretary of the Union of Soviet Writers in 1934, despite the fact that he had no connection with literature. Later he was in charge of purging provin­cial Party organizations, and during the war he was a secretary of the Central Committee (and candidate member of the Politburo) with special responsibility for political control of the army. His death in 1945 was later attributed to the Jewish doctors arrested on Stalin's orders in 1952.

Shengeli, Georgi Arkadievich (1894-1956): Poet, translator and critic.

Shervinski, Sergei Vasilievich (1892- ): Poet, critic and translator.

Shevchenko, Taras Grigorievich (1814-1861): Ukrainian national poet, exiled for his criticism of the social and national policies of the Czarist regime.

Shkiriatov, Matvei Fedorovich (1883-1954): Major Stalinist official, a member of the Central Purge Commission set up in 1933, and a chief assistant to Yezhov during the Terror.

Shklovski, Victor Borisovich (1893- ): Eminent literary scholar and Formalist critic, a member of LEF. Shklovski's influence in the 1920's was immense, and he continued to write articles, books and scenarios throughout the Stalinist era to the present day.

Shopen, Ivan Ivanovich (1798-1870): Author of A Historical Memoir

on the Condition of the Armenian Region at the Time of Its Union •with the Russian Empire.

Shostakovich, Dmitri Dmitrievich (1906- ): Famous Soviet composer.

Srmonov, Konstantin Mikhailovich (1915- ): Novelist, poet and play­wright.

Sinani_y Boris Naumovich: St. Petersburg doctor of Karaite extraction, a confidant of the leading Social Revolutionaries. He is described in Mandelstam's Noise of Time (see The Prose of Osip Mandelstam, translated by Clarence Brown, Princeton University Press, 1965).

Sluchevski, Konstantin Konstantinovich (1837-1904): Poet.

Slutski, Boris Abramovich (1919- ): Soviet poet and translator.

Sologuby Fedor (Fedor Kuzmich Teternikov) (1863-1927): Symbolist poet and novelist, famous for his novel The Petty Demon (1907). His writings of the Soviet period remain largely unpublished.

Solovievy Vladimir Sergeyevich (1853-1900): Mystic, philosopher and poet who greatly influenced the Symbolists.

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander lsayevich (1918- ): Russian novelist who was in a forced-labor camp from 1945 to 1953. His One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) was the first account of the camps to appear in print in the Soviet Union. A larger novel on the same subject, The First Circle, has been published only in the West. "Zotov," mentioned by Mrs. Mandelstam on p. 339, is a character in his short story "Incident at the Krechetovka Station."

Sosnora, Victor Alexandrovich (1936- ): Leningrad poet.

Spasskiy Sergei Dmitrievich (1898-1956): Poet. Arrested in 1936 or 1937, he was rehabilitated only after many years in prisons and camps.

Startsev, Abel Isaakovich: Literary scholar and critic.

Stavski у Vasili P. (?—1943): Prose writer. Appointed secretary of the Board of the Union of Soviet Writers in 1936, he was active in the denunciation of writers for Trotskiism and other "crimes."

Stenich (Smetanich), Valentin Iosifovich: Poet, translator (notably of James Joyce and John Dos Passos). He was evidendy arrested and shot in 1938.

Stolpner, Boris Grigorievich (1863-?): Marxist philosopher and translator of Hegel.

Struveу Gleb Petrovich (1898- ): Eminent emigre scholar, author of the standard History of Soviet Russian Literature. With Boris Filip- pov, he edited the works of Mandelstam, Pasternak, Akhmatova, Gumilev and others.

Strzigovski, Josef (1862-1941): Austrian art historian, author of Die Baukunst der Armenier und Europa (Vienna, 1918).

SurikoVy Vasili lvanovich (1848-1916): Russian artist whose painting "Morning of the Execution of the Streltsy" was first exhibited on March 1, 1881, the day Alexander III was assassinated.

Surkov, Alexei Alexandrovich (1899- ): Poet, graduate of the Insti­tute of Red Professors, war correspondent; editor of Literaturnaya Gazeta (Literary Gazette), 1944-46; secretary of the Union of Soviet Writers, 1954-59.

Syrtsov, Sergei lvanovich (?-19з8): Member of the Central Committee.

He was premier of the R.S.F.S.R., 1929, and candidate member of the Politburo, 1930. In December 1930 he was accused, with Besso Lominadze, of creating an "anti-Party bloc." He disappeared in 1936 and is presumed to have died in a labor camp.

Tager, Elena Mikhailovna (1895-1964): Poet and prose writer. In 1920 she was expelled from Petrograd to Archangel by the Cheka, but returned to Leningrad in 1927. In 1939 she was arrested and accused of working for the "fascist intelligence service." She served her ten years' sentence in Kolyma, and then spent a further six years in exile in western Siberia and central Asia. In 1954 she was allowed to go and live in Moscow, but was not formally rehabilitated until 1956. A book of stories she had first published in 1929 was reissued in 1957. Her memoir on Mandelstam was published in New York in 1965 (see Tolstoi, Alexei Nikolayevich).

Tairov, Alexander Yakovlevich (1885-1950): Actor and, later, director of the Kamerny Theater in Moscow. He was dismissed from this post in 1939.

Tarasenkov, Anatoli Kuzmich (1909-1956): Literary scholar and critic.

Tatlin, Vladimir Yevgrafovich (1885-1953): Constructivist painter and set designer.

Tikhonov, Nikolai Semionovich (1896- ): Soviet poet, influenced by Gumilev and Khlebnikov, who later adapted to the demands of "so­cialist realism." He was secretary of the Union of Soviet Writers, 1944-46, and from 1950 chairman of the Soviet Peace Committee.

Tiutchev, Fedor Ivanovich (1803-1873): Major lyric poet.

Tolstoi, Count Alexei Konstantinovich (1817-1875): Poet and playwright whose historical plays and humorous verse are still popular.

Tolstoi, Count Alexei Nikolayevich (1882-1945): Poet, playwright and journalist, famous for two historical novels: The Road to Calvary and Peter /. He was a prolific writer of novels and short stories and enjoyed a great vogue in the Soviet Union. In 1919 he emigrated but soon returned to the Soviet Union. Known as the "Red Count," he proceeded to adapt himself with unrivaled skill to the twists and turns of Party policy.

The circumstances which led to Mandelstam slapping Tolstoi's face in 1934 are known only from E. M. Tager's memoir on Mandel­stam, published in the West a few years ago (Novy Zhurnal (New Review), December 1965, New York). According to Mrs. Tager, the whole affair started with a party in the Mandelstams' apartment in Moscow during which the novelist Sergei Borodin (also known under the pseudonym Amir Sargidzhan) assaulted Mrs. Mandel­stam. A writers' "court of honor" presided over by Tolstoi looked into the incident, but appears to have exonerated Borodin and sug­gested that the Mandelstams were themselves to blame. On a visit to Leningrad some time later (in the middle of 1934) Mandelstam slapped Tolstoi's face during a meeting in the director's office of the Leningrad Writers' Publishing House. It happened in the presence of half a dozen other writers, and when Mrs. Tager arrived on the scene a few moments later she found them all still standing open- mouthed with horror and surprise—like the cast at the end of Gogol's Inspector General.

Tomashevski, Boris Victorovich (1890-1957): Leningrad literary scholar and editor.

Tretiakov, Peter Nikolayevich (1892-1939): Essayist and playwright, member of LEF. He was well known for his Roar, China! Arrested during the purges, he died in a camp,

Tsvetayeva, Marina Ivanovna (1892-1941): Gifted Russian poet who was a friend of Pasternak, Mandelstam and Akhmatova. All four dedi­cated verse to one another, and are regarded as having no equals in their generation. Tsvetayeva's fate was the most tragic of all. Her husband, Sergei Efron, whom she married in 1912, served during the Civil War as an officer in the White Army, but she was trapped in Moscow till 1922. From 1922 till 1925 she lived in Prague, and then in Paris till 1939. As a suspected GPU agent, Efron was forced to flee France and went back to Moscow. Tsvetayeva followed him there in 1939, only to find that he had been executed on his return, and that their daughter had been sent to a camp. When war broke out, she was evacuated to the town of Elabuga, where in August 1941 she hanged herself. Volumes of her selected verse were finally published in the Soviet Union in 1961 and 1965. In addition to her poetry, she wrote plays and valuable critical essays. A memoir by her on her relations with Mandelstam was published in 1964 in the Oxford Slavonic Papers.

Tvardovski, Alexander Trifonovich (1910- ): Soviet poet, author of the immensely popular wartime ballad on the soldier Vasili Tiorkin. Editor of the liberal literary journal Novy Mir (New World) from 1949 to 1954, and again from 1958 to 1970.

Tynianov, Yuri Nikolayevich (1895-1943): Eminent Formalist critic, noted also for his biographical novels (on Pushkin, Griboyedov, etc.).

Ту shier, Alexander Grigorievich (1908-?): Painter and sculptor. He taught art to Mrs. Mandelstam.

Uritski, Mikhail Solomonovich (1873-1918): Menshevik who joined the Bolsheviks in 1917 and became head of the Petrograd Cheka. His assassination on August 30, 1919 (by the young poet Kannengiesser), and the wounding of Lenin the same day unleashed the first massive Red Terror. The Petrograd Cheka immediately shot 512 hostages.

Vaginov, Konstantin Konstantinovich (1900-1934): A little-known poet of considerable distinction.

Vakhtangov, Evgeni Bagrationovich (1883-1922): Famous Moscow thea­ter director.

Veresayev (Smidovich), Vikenti Vikentievich (1867-1945): Novelist and literary historian.

Verkhovski, Yuri Nikandrovich (1878-1956): Translator, poet and liter­ary critic.

Vinogradov, Victor Vladimir ovich (1895-1969): Eminent linguist, pro­fessor at Moscow University and member of the Academy of Sci­ences.

Vishnevski, Vsevolod Vitalievich (1900-1951): Author of plays on Red

Army and Navy themes who became a sycophantic supporter of Stalin. His Unforgettable ipip (1949) considerably enhances Stalin's role in the Civil War (and was duly awarded a Stalin Prize). In 1933, in an article entitled "We Must Know the West," he called for better knowledge of such Western writers as James Joyce, whose Ulysses he extolled for its portrayal of the capitalist era.

Volpe, Caesar Samoilovich (1904-1941): Critic and editor.

Volpin, Mikhail Davidovich (1902- ): Poet and scenario writer. He collaborated with Erdman.

Voronski, Alexander Konstantinovich (1884-1943): Old Bolshevik who edited the major Soviet literary journal Krasnaya Nov (Red Virgin Soil), which in the 1920's was the main outlet for the "Fellow Travel­ers." As an advocate of rapprochement between "Fellow Travelers" and "Proletarians," Voronski came under heavy fire from Averbakh's RAPP, and in 1927 he was expelled from the Party (his place as editor of Krasnaya Nov being taken over by Fedor Raskolnikov). Voronski finally disappeared during the purges in 1937 and probably died in a labor camp in 1943.

Vyshinski, Andrei Yanuarievich (1883-1954): A Menshevik until 1920, he was professor of law during the 1920's and later became Rector of Moscow University. He was appointed Procurator General in 1935, and as such was the chief accuser of all the Old Bolsheviks (whom he denounced as "mad dogs") during the Moscow show trials. He replaced Molotov as Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1949 and died in New York while representing the Soviet Union at the United Na­tions.

Wrangel, Baron Peter Nikolayevich (1878-1928): Russian general who succeeded Denikin as commander-in-chief of the White Army in the south of Russia.

Yagoda, Genrikh Grigorievich (1891-1938): Member of the Cheka from 1920, he became head of the NKVD (secret police) in 1934. He was replaced by Yezhov in 1936 and appointed Commissar of Communica­tions. Arrested in 1937 after newspaper attacks on him, he was tried with Bukharin, Rykov and others in the last great show trial, and executed.

Yakhontov, Vladimir Nikolayevich (1899-1945): Prominent Soviet actor. Associated with the Moscow Art Theater, he was also known for his readings of literary works, and his one-man sketches. He com­mitted suicide in 1945. Lilia Yakhontov was his wife.

Yakulov, Georgi Bogdanovich (1884-1928): Painter and set designer.

Yarkho, Boris Isaakovich: Linguist and translator.

Yashin (Popov), Alexander Yakovlevich (1913-1969): Poet and prose writer. Author of "The Levers" (Literary Moscow, vol. 2 [1956]).

Yazykov, Nikolai Mikhailovich (1803-1846): Poet.

Yenukidze, Abel Sofronovich (1877-1937): Old comrade of Stalin, secre­tary of the Central Executive Committee. Expelled from the Party in 1935, he was arrested, tried in secret and executed in 1937.

Yesenin, Sergei Alexandrovich (1895-1925): Popular lyric poet of peasant origin. He married Isadora Duncan in 1922 and traveled to western

Europe and America with her. After his initial acceptance of the October Revolution, he became disillusioned and came under in­creasing attack for his riotous behavior. In 1925 he hanged himself in a Leningrad hotel.

Yezhov, Nikolai Ivanovich (1894-1939?): Member of the Central Com­mittee from 1934 and chief of the NKVD, 1936-38. Stalin's Great Purge reached its height under his direction of the NKVD, and he was then made the scapegoat for its "excesses." He was succeeded by Beria in 1938, and probably was executed in 1939, although there has never been any official information about his fate.

Yudina, Maria Veniaminova (1899- ): Eminent Soviet pianist and professor at the Moscow Conservatory.

Zadonski, Tikhon (1724-1783): Bishop, spiritual elder of the Zadonsk monastery, and author of religious works.

Zalka, Mate (1896-1937): A Hungarian who fought on the side of the Bolsheviks during the Civil War. A member of RAPP, he published a novel in the 1930's. He served with the rank of general in the Spanish civil war (under the name of Lukacz) and was killed at the front.

Zaslavski, David I. (1880-1965): Journalist. A notorious apologist for Stalinism, he made a vicious attack on Pasternak after he was awarded (and forced to renounce) the Nobel Prize in 1959.

Zenkevich, Mikhail (1891- ): Acmeist poet.

Zhdanov, Andrei Alexandrovich (1896-1948): Close associate of Stalin who acted as his lieutenant in cultural matters. At the First Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934, Zhdanov made a speech in which the doc­trine of "socialist realism" was first promulgated as the official Party line in literature. In 1946 he denounced Akhmatova, Zoshchenko, Pasternak and others for attempting to "poison the minds" of Soviet youth by their decadent, apolitical and "vulgar" writings which had been published in the literary magazines Zvezda (Star) and Lenin­grad, By a special Party decree of August 14, 1946, Leningrad was closed and Zvezda was ordered to "correct" its editorial policy and not open its pages again to Akhmatova, Zoshchenko "and their like." The "Zhdanov Decree" on literature was followed by similar ones on music and the cinema.

Zhirmunski, Victor Maximovich (1889- ): Eminent literary scholar. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences.

Zoshchenko, Mikhail Mikhailovich (1895-1958): Popular satirist. He was attacked in 1946 by Zhdanov for his "vulgar parody" of Soviet life and, together with Akhmatova, expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers.

Zubov, Count Valentin Platonovich (1884- ): Founder of the Institute of the History of Arts (1912), which continued as a school and a publisher of scholarly work until it was finally closed by the govern­ment in 1930. Count Zubov was imprisoned, but was released and allowed to emigrate to Paris in the 1920's.

В. Note on Literary Movements and Organizations

In the twenty years or so before the October Revolution, Russian litera­ture, reacting against the nineteenth-century realist tradition, went through a period of ferment which is sometimes spoken of as the "Silver Age." Its main feature was a revival of poetry, which in the latter half of the nineteenth century had been almost completely overshadowed by prose.

The first and most influential of the new movements was that of the Symbolists (roughly 1894 to 1910), who, as Mrs. Mandelstam points out, transformed the aesthetic standards of the Russian public. Their precursor was the religious philosopher and poet Vladimir Soloviev, and among the leading figures were: Valeri Briusov, Viacheslav Ivanov, Alexander Blok and Andrei Bely. There were different trends within Symbolism, but its hallmark was a certain other worldliness: poetry was often a vehicle for mystical insights which could only be hinted at in "symbolic" language.

The Acmeists were members of the so-called Poets' Guild, which was founded in 1912 by Nikolai Gumilev and Sergei Gorodetski in opposition to the Symbolists. Their aim was to restore the autonomy of poetic lan­guage; they rejected "mysticism" and strove for precision and clarity in the use of words. Akhmatova and Mandelstam were the most outstanding of the Acmeists, who existed as an organized group only until 1914.

Another important movement launched in 1912 was Futurism, which was also a reaction to the Symbolists. The Futurists (the most prominent of whom were Vladimir Mayakovski and Velimir Khlebnikov) espoused modern technology and urbanism and in their poetry they were dis­tinguished by their penchant for neologisms, slang and words of their own invention. Temperamentally attracted to revolution, most of them were avant-garde in politics as well as in art. Largely for this reason, Futurism was the only literary movement to survive the October Revolu­tion, constituting itself in 1923 as the so-called Left Front (LEF) and stridently claiming to be the only true voice of the new order.

This claim was successfully contested by the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP), founded in 1925. Though few were true proletarians by origin, the members of RAPP, such as Leopold Averbakh and Alexander Fadeyev, asserted that the chief role of literature must be to serve the interests of the proletariat, as the new ruling class, and to re­flect its "ideology." From 1929 to 1932, RAPP was given its head by the Party and exercised dictatorial powers over literature. RAPP's leaders were convinced zealots who welcomed the rigors of the First Five Year Plan and Collectivization—the relative "liberalism" of NEP (New Economic Policy) had seemed to them a betrayal of the Revolution's promise.

In line with this "liberalism," the Central Committee of the Party had in 1925 issued a famous resolution (supposedly drafted by Bukharin) proclaiming its neutrality, for the time being, as between the competing literary groups. In this atmosphere of relative tolerance, it was possible during the middle 1920's for most writers, whatever their "class" back­ground, to carry on as "Fellow Travelers" (the name given them by Trotski). The "Fellow Travelers," who formed the largest group of Soviet writers in the first post-Revolutionary decade, were expected to give over-all assent to the new regime, but were not yet forced to express positive commitment to it in their work.

Some of them, joining together in 1921 in a group known as the Serapion Brothers, (Mikhail Zoshchenko, Konstantin Fedin, Nikolai Tik­honov, and others), tried to establish the independence of literature from all political and social commitment, but this position became progressively more untenable in the latter half of the 1920's. The Serapion Brothers were allied with the Formalists (Victor Shklovski, Victor Zhirmunski, and others), a new school of literary criticism (founded in 1916) which con­centrated on problems of form in the artistic process. Toward the end of the 1920's the Formalists came under heavy attack, and "formalism" became a standard term of abuse for any attempt to divorce literature from the political and "educational" functions imposed on it by the Party.

In 1932 Stalin made such functions paramount by abruptly decreeing the disbandment of all separate literary groups, including RAPP, which had appeared to triumph over its rivals during its three-year "dictator­ship." Stalin had no use for zealots of any kind, and wanted writers to be obedient instruments of his will, without convictions of their own. They were now all forced to join the Union of Soviet Writers, a bureau­cratic machine for the imposition of strict control over literature. The doctrine of Socialist Realism, promulgated at the same time, became bind­ing on all writers who wanted to continue being published. In effect, it meant conveying the Party's "message" in a humdrum realist style de­rived from the nineteenth-century Russian classics.

In the years since Stalin's death there has been some loosening of the controls imposed in 1932 (and reinforced after World War II in a series of Party decrees associated with the name of Zhdanov), but Soviet writers can still function legally only within the general administrative and ideological framework established under Stalin.

INDEX

Abkhaz Council of People's Commissars,

323-24 Acmeists, 45, 154,1^9 M.'s lecture on, 174, 246-47 M.'s "world-sense" apd, 262-64 permanence of, xi-xii their attitude toward women, 267 Adalis, Adelina Yefimovna, 68, 74, 299- 300

"Adjutant" agents, 36-39 neighbor as, 39, 89-92 semi-military, 171Я "Admirer" agents, 35-36 "Age,The" (Mandelstam), 17171,256 Agranov, Yakov Savlovich, 172 Akhmatova, Anna Andreyevna, 3-4, 127, 144-46, 170, 172-741 "i, ²4°« 349» 35°

as "Cassandra," 159

on destroying manuscripts, 46-47

dramatic fragments of, 251

forced cheer of, 314

generation of, 167, 305-6

Gumilev's archive and, 273-75

holy terror of, 29-30

literary taste of, 228-29, 239, 241

on mass deportation, 98

M.'s disavowal of, 173-74

M.'s exile and, 38-40

M.'s first arrest and, 9-12,14-17,19, 27

M.'s hallucinations about, 68

M.'s last visit with, 318

nature of M.'s relationship with, 217-20

obedient to rules of etiquette, 286

pension of, 117

as petitioner for M.'s release, 24-25 poetry of, 203, 226, 327, 344 Acmeist, 154, 237 dedicated to M.'s death, 202 lines on Leningrad, 317-18 literary restrictions, 139 method of composition, 189 period of silence, 162-63 "positive," 153

text of Voronezh poem, 217-18 on poetry, 70, 73, 263

premonitions in M.'s work, 198 poverty of, 112 surveillance over, 17-19, 36 on Tikhonov, 234 on Twentieth Congress, 373-74 on "vegetarian" era, 99 Alexandrov, 294-95

"Aliscans," 240, 252 Altman, Natan Isayevich, 219 Amusin, Joseph Davidovich, 221 Anderson, Marian, 185-86 Andreyev, Andrei Andreyevich, 353-56 Andronikov, Irakli Luarsabovich, 314, 347-48

Annenski, Innokenti Fedorovich, 190, 236, 239

"Apartment, The" (Mandelstam), 85,120 "good mate" theme in, 177 as rejoinder to Pasternak, 150 Apollon (journal), 175, 177 M.'s early works published in, xi-xii, 262

Ariosto, Ludovico, 239

M.'s poem about, 249, 271 Arkhangelski (criminal), 393 "Armed with the Sight of Narrow Wasps" (Mandelstam), 200 Armenia, journey to, 101, 250-51 German poetry linked to, 227-28 official arrangement of, 113, 117, 180, 250

"Armenian" poetry cycle (Mandelstam), 190, 193

Aseyev, Nikolai Nikolayevich, 200, 303-4

Assyrian culture, 256-57

Averbakh, Leopold Leopoldovich, 164-

165,172,178Я, 233 Awakum, Archpriest, 57, 241

Babel, Isaac Emanuilovich, 6, 306, 320-22 rehabilitation of, 374 unbridled curiosity of, 321-22 Bagritski, Lida, 27-28 Bagritski, Vsevolod Eduardovich (Seva), ²74

Bakh, Alexei Nikolayevich, 231 Balloons (Mandelstam), 138 Balmont, Konstantin Dmitrievich, 237 Baltrushaitis, Yurgis Kazimirovich, 27 Baratynski, Evgeni Abramovich, 238, 288 Barbier, Henri Auguste, 170, 177, 239 Bedny, Demian, 25-27, 160

in disgrace with Stalin, 26 Belinski, Vissarion Grigorievich, 309 Bely, Andrei, 12, 66, 155-57 luminous quality of, 155 M.'s poem to, 230 Berdiayev, Nikolai Alexandrovich, 109, 143, 221 contrasted to M., 263-68

as Emigre, 240, 266 Bernstein, Alexander (Sania), 350 Bernstein, Sergei Ignatievich, 276, 350 Bezymenski, Alexander Ilyich, 90-9», 324-25

"Black Earth" (Mandelstam), 272 Blagoi, Dmitri Dmitrievich, 149 Bliumkin, Yakov Grigorievich, vii, 101-9

as M.'s sworn enemy, 101-7 Blok, Alexander Alexandrovich, 265, 267 on civilization, 249, 254 on end of Russian culture, 329 Blok, Georgi Petrovich, 111 Bolshevik (periodical), 139, 258-59 Bolsheviks,/бя, 108, no arrest of former, 309-10 non-Party, 168, 311-12 poets protected by, 154 Borodayevski, Valerian В., 237 Borodin, Sergei Petrovich (Amir Sargi-

dzhan), 90 "Bride of Corinth" (Goethe), 73 Brik, Osip Maximovich, 172-73 Briusov, Valeri Yakovlevich, 154-55 critique of, 226 in poetry anthology, 237 as Symbolist, 263 Brodski, David Grigorievich, 4, 91

as police agent, 6 Brodski, Joseph Alexandrovich, 333 Bruni, Lev Alexandrovich, 299, 319-20 Bruni, Nadia, 319-20 Bruni, Nikolai, 319 "Bublik" (ex-convict), 221-24 Bukharin, Nikolai lvanovich, 25, 82, 112- 118, 136, 180 as editor, 138

his letter to Stalin, 112, 145, 388 loss of his influence, 113, 222 on M.'s first arrest, 21-22 petitions to, 113-18 travel permission secured by, 250-52 Bulgakov, Elena Sergeyevna, 39 Bulgakov, Mikhail Afanasievich, 39 Butyrki prison, 372-73» 39*

"Canzona" (Mandelstam), 179 Central Committee, 179, 258, 261, 323-24, 376

posthumous letter to, 276 writer's letter to, 166 Chaadayev, Peter Yakovlevich, 240

M.'s article about, 247, 252, 255 Charents, Egishe, 190-91 Chechanovski, Mark Osipovich, 235, 247

advice from, 159, 223 Cheka (secret police), 14, 16-19, 23-25, 75-80, 91-92, in, 346 Babel's curiosity about, 321-22 Bliumkin and, 104,106 Cherdyn Commandant of, 58-59,61, 67 children of Chekists, 370 evidence collected by, 316 head of, see Yagoda headquarters of, 29-34, 40 "internal emigres" labeled by, 172

Klychkov executed by, 259-60 M. arrested by, 4-12, 236 M.'s attitude toward, 84 M.'s second petition to, 115-16 mass surveillance organized by, 34-35 psychological torture used by, 75-78 rehabilitations affecting, 49 revised values of, 79-80 rumors circulated by, 24 second search by, 16-17,19, 23 seminar group arrested by, 306-7 "summoning" tactics of, 86-88 Cherdyn, see Mandelstam, Osip—exiled

to Cherdyn Cherniak, Robert Mikhailovich, 107 Chichagov, Olga, 310 Chicherin, Georgi Vasilievich, 104 Chorene, Moses of, 227, 241 Chorny, Sasha, 7

Christophorovich (police interrogator), 29-32,40,68, 74-76,79-86,91 described, 30,79 execution of, 82 intimidating manner of, 74 primitive methods of, 80-81 on solitary confinement, 75 Chukovski, Kornei lvanovich, 232, 238 Chuvash Teachers' Training College, 88, 207

Civil War, see Russian Civil War Communism, 113, 287-89 Communist Party, 133, 242, 244-45, 272,

324

artistic standards set by, 96,172 cells of, 34

as inverted church, 256 local, 180 regional, 208

"subversive literature" of, 347 See also Bolsheviks; Central Commit­tee; Twentieth Party Congress "Conversation About Dante" (Mandel­stam), 31, 73, 169, 184-85, 190, 247 on form, 187 on his archives, 275 notes for, 251 as a sketch, 155 on special sight, 179 on Virgil, 176 "Convict" cycle, see "Wolf' poetry cycle

Cor Ardens (Ivanov), 236

Criminal Code, Article 58 of, 22, 284, 380

"Cult of personality," 304

Dante (Alighieri), 38, 179, 357 M.'s interest in, 228-29 _t

See also "Conversation About Dante' "Dante and the Cab Driver" (Mandel­stam), 387

Darmolatova, Maria Nikolayevna, 308-12 Decline of the West, The (Spengler), 249

Denikin, Anton lvanovich, 271 Denunciations, 173, 179» 285, 305 number of, 88

of parents, 212-13 published articles of, 139 of Stalin, 64Я, 373n of tenants, 129-^31 Derzhavin, Gavriil Romanovich, 238, 274 Dialectic of Nature, The (Engels), 241-

24З . . , Diki, Alexei Demsovich, 315-16 "Dina" ("Dinochka") (actress), 39, 90-

91

Dligach (adjutant), 39

as potential traitor, 89-92 Dobroliubov, Nikolai Alexandrovich, 2 37i309

Dr. Zhivago (Pasternak), 83,150-54, 263 composition of, 299 published abroad, 288 Dolmatovski, Yevgeni Aronovich, 386 Dombrovski, Yuri, 387-88, 390 Dunayevski (journalist), 133 Dzerzhinski, Felix Edmundovich, 105-6, 256

M.'s second petition to, 115-16

Education, surveillance in, 34, 206-7 Efros, Abram Markovich, 341 Egyptian Stamp, The (Mandelstam), 173. '75-76 publication of, xii Ehrenburg, Ilia Grigorievich, 22-23, 107, "5, 145, 352, 374 bureaucratic apologia of, 25 dossier on, 316 his description of M., 306 M.'s forced-labor sentence and, 382-84 M.'s poetry criticized by, 187-88 memoirs of, 102, 139 on Stalin poem, 160-61 Ehrenburg, Liuba, vii, 316, 354 Eichenbaum, Boris Mikhailovich, 272 Ekster, Alexandra Alexandrovna, 107 Elections, 51, 338

refusal to vote in, 340 Elsberg, Yakov, 36-37 Erdman, Nikolai Robertovich, 57П, 321,

326-28 Eulenspiegel affair, 178

Fadeyev, Alexander Alexandrovich, 120, 152, 178Я, 261, 352-56 "conspiracy" headed by, 316 government award to, 376-77 as influential figure, 352-53 Fedin, Konstantin, 149, 199, 280, 306, 332

new apartment of, 277-78 Fellow Travelers, 173, 176, 306 Gorki's concern for, 117 government awards to, 376-77 as non-Party Bolsheviks, 168 prosperity of, 39 publication boycotted by, 111 Fet, Afanasi Afanasievich, 238-39 Filippov, Boris Andreyevich, 251 "Finder of a Horseshoe, The" (Mandel­stam), 171», 172 "First Voronezh Notebook" (Mandel­stam), 72, 191-93 submitted to Fadeyev, 152 Florenski, Father Pavel Alexandrovich, 230

For a Communist Education (magazine), 139,223,235 censorship affecting, 259 Forced-labor camps, 62-65, 133, 187, 316, 377-97 . "crime" committed m, 319 as "health resorts," 211-12 hospitals in, 70, 396 mentally ill in, 124 packages mailed to, 127, 388-90 poetry recited in, 260, 381, 393 "repeaters" in, 144, 384 separation of sexes in, 62 survival in, 378-79, 383, 394~95 Usov in, 364

See also Mandelstam, Osip—forced- labor sentence of; Rehabilitation Formalists, 167, 276,420 "Fourth Prose" (Mandelstam), 15, 38» 226-27, 388 fur coat theme of, 193 inflammatory nature of, 270 on Korotkova, 22, 118, 251 new audience for, 246 on "omni-tolerance," 226 title of, 177-78 "Fragments" (Piast), 19-20 "Fur Coat" (Mandelstam), 193 Furmanov (film-maker and former Cheka official), 206, 316 game invented by, 14 Futurists, 419

"Gaponism," 220

"Gaps in Round Bays" (Mandelstam),

197, 358 Garin, Erast Pavlovich, 327 Gerstein, Emma, 16, 127, 193, 273-74 Ginzburg, Grigori Romanovich, 142 Ginzburg, Leo Moritsevich, 142 Gippius, Vladimir Vasilievich, 239, 255 Gladkov, Fedor V., 120 Glazunov, Larisa, 18 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 73, 116 broadcast about 141, 251-52 M.'s interest in, 227-28, 239 Gogol, Nikolai Vasilievich, 17872, 243

Bely's study of, 155-56 "Goldfinch, The" (Mandelstam), 197,

274, 365

"Goldfinch" poetry cycle (Mandelstam),

198-99

Gorki, Maxim, 153-54, 326 clothing dispensed by, 117 Gumilev's execution and, 110 politics of, 11 Stalin on, 339 Gosizdat, see State Publishing House GPU (secret police), 572, 121-22, 130-32 citizens under charge of, 126-27, 210 fable about, 327

M.'s requested interview with, 206-10 permits issued by, 118-19 tenants denounced before, 130-31 Grigoriev ("personal nobleman"), 310-11 Grigoriev, Apollon Alexandrovich, 238- ² 39

Grigoriev, Tania, see Mandelstam, Tania

Grigoriev Gronski, Ivan Mikhailovich, 159 Gumilev, Anna, see Akhmatova Gumilev, Lev Nikolayevich, 3, 127, 374 as first listener, 72-73 as hostage, 153, 203, 286 M.'s arrest and, 15 Gumilev, Nikolai Stepanovich, 46, 219, 226, 276 Acmeist poems of, xi-xii, 154 archive of, 273-74 execution of, 27, 109-10 his poem about words, 267 M. on, 174

M.'s copies of, 236-37 on Mallarme, 239-40 on meaning of stars, 198 origin of one of his lines, 281 prophesies of, 9-10 Gusev, Sergei Ivanovich, 179-80

Herzen, Alexander Ivanovich, 96, 161, 255 as "aristocrat," 265 indoctrination program of, 114 influence of, 170, 230 Herzen House (Moscow), 46, 152, 233, 259, 350

History of the C.PS.U.: Short Course,

The (Stalin), 231, 246 Humanism, 322 "abstract," 300, 325 era of "high," 9 19th-century, 255, 289, 356 professional, 381 "Humanism and the Modern World"

(Mandelstam), 256 "Hundred-and-fivers" (stopiatnitsa), 344- 345

"I Am Not Yet Dead" (Mandelstam),

20272

"1 Drink to Officers' Epaulettes" (Mandelstam), 193-94» 277 "1 Have Led Myself by the Hand"

(Mandelstam), 158 "I Have Returned to My Native City"

(Mandelstam), 270 Identity papers, 99, 118-21

value of, 120, 284 Informers, 18-19, 34~39, 48-49» 316 citizens framed by, 34 code names of, 80 loyalty of, 86-87

public opinion plumbed by, 168-69 recruitment of, 67-68 retraction of testimony of, 48

self-esteem of, 132 village, 345 young people as, 331 See also "Adjutant" agents Intelligentsia (intellectuals), 28, 103, 145, 266, 300, 331-33 academic, 230-31 alleged protector of, 1i capitulation of, 165

contempt for, 105, 117, 132, 325-26, 328 definition of, 332 "democratic," 311-12 "fourth estate" of, 17 6 Herzen on, 96

ideological subjugation of, 126 Marxist works owned by, 236 new, 331, 333 . oldest generation of, 306 Pasternak's feelings about, 153 "secret," 318-19 self-destruction of, 109, 33* sickness of, 47-48, 125 International Bookstore (Moscow), 26 "Isolation but preservation" order, 32,43, 5^-59) 367 benefits of, 47, 84, 210 interpretation of, 63 Italy, 243, 247, 24^-52 "It's Night Outside" (Mandelstam), 150- 15 ¹

Ivanov, Georgi, 5 6n, 219» 239-40 on Bliumkin, 102-4 Cor Ardens, 236 Ivanov, Viacheslav Ivanovich, 154, 263

on ideas, 163-64 Izvestia (newspaper), 22, 270

"January 1, 1924" (Mandelstam), 173» 185 Jews, 33, 130-31, 297 absence of anti-Semitism, 342 Pasternak on, 161 pogroms against, 103, 271 purge of Jewish instructors, 313 Yiddish writers, 354-55 "Journey to Armenia" (Mandelstam), 158-60, 21672, 222-23, 226 criticism of, 158-59 Marxists upset by, 247 publication of, 139, 315 social criticism in, 265 suggested disavowal of, 159, 223 "Jumpers" (sectarians), 142-43

Kablukov, Sergei Platonovich, 175 Kachalov, Vasili Ivanovich, 326 Kaletski (visitor to Voronezh), 130, 132

Rudakov contrasted to, 272 Kalinin, 51-52, 136, 334-41, 352 author's return to, 212-13, 243, 340-41 election held in, 338 Erdman in, 321, 326 manuscripts left in, 363 room rented in, 335 Kamenev, Lev Borisovich, 156 Katanian, Ruben Pavlovich, 144

Katayev, Evgeni Petrovich, see Petrov Katayev, Valentin Petrovich, 178», 236, 277-81, 300 appointment arranged by, 352 on Babel's fear, 321 as member of privileged class, 277-78 Kaverin, Veniamin Alexandrovich, 167, 306, 358

Kazarnovski (journalist and prisoner),

377-84, 390 Kazin, Vasili, 324-25 Khardzhiev, Nikolai Ivanovich, 219, 235, 350-51

as editor, 351

Rudakov's letters copied by, 274 Khazin (forced-labor prisoner), 382, 390 Khazin, Mme. (M.'s mother-in-law), 38, 136, 214, 269, 292 as doctor, 185 M.'s first arrest and, 21, 31 Khazin, Evgeni Yakovlevich (M.'s

brother-in-law), 40-41, 137, 181, 235, 292 announces M.'s death, 376 on commutation of sentence, 94 Erdman's visit to, 327 essays copied by, 270 M.'s archives left with, 271, 275 on M.'s illness, 163n manuscript salvaged by, 16 Pasternak's call to, 143 on rationing system, too on Stalinist terror, 298 on subjugation of intelligentsia, 126 on translating work, 281 Khint (forced-labor prisoner), 382 Khlebnikov, Velimir, 6, 350, 357 Khodasevich, Vladislav Felitsianovich, 73 Khrushchev, Nikita, 261, 312

Stalin denounced by, 64n, 373 Kirov, Sergei Mironovich, 113, 118

trial of his assassins, 195 Kirsanov, Semion Isaakovich, 155, 159 Klychkov, Sergei Antonovich, 138, 196,

258-60, 281 Kochetov, Vsevolod Anisimovich, 139, 304

Koltsov, Mikhail Yefimovich, 299 Kolyma, forced-labor camp at, 64-65, 144,

283, 292, 378, 385, 387 Komarovski, Count Vasili Alexeyevich, 237

Komsomol, 34, 49, 335» 343, 385 executed members of, 114 newspaper of, 89, 178 Konevskoi, Ivan, 237 Kornilov, Boris Petrovich, 317 Korotkova (Bukharin's secretary), 22, 118, 251

Kossior, Stanislav Vikentievich, 298, 323,

327

Kostyrev (writer), 131-32, 210, 243 Moscow apartment returned to, 291-92 Moscow apartment vacated by, 214-15, 281

residence permit canceled for, 282-83, 285

Krasnaya Nov (literary journal), 111,

120,152, 260 Kremlin (Moscow), 26, 109-10, 149, 326 cathedrals in, 251 hospital in, 112, 261 M.'s stay in, 104 Kudasheva, Maria (Maya) Pavlovna, 381 Kuzin, Boris Sergeyevich, 13, 67-68, 181,

217

book entitled by, 192 companionship of, 222 execution affecting, 101-2 as first listener, 72-73 heartlessness of, 87 imprisonment of, 77 M.'s first meeting with, 227-28

Labor camps, see Forced-labor camps Lakhuti, Abolgasem Akhmedzade, 300, 302

Lakoba, Nestor Ivanovich, 113, 324 "Lament of St. Alexis," 240, 252 Land and Factory Publishing House, 114, 138

Lapin, Boris Matveyevich, 237, 357 "Larisa" (police agent's daughter), 359, 366, 368 on residence permits, 52 traumatized by her father's death, 49-50 Lebedeva, Sarra, 308, 312 LEF poets, 154-55, 167,173, 177 M. attacked by, 148-49 technical audience for, 249 Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich, 28», 235-36, 295

Gumilev's execution and, 109-10 Leningrad (Petrograd, Petersburg), 107, 109, 117, 174-75, 269-72, 304-12, 387 comic verse tied to, 352 former aristocrats expelled from, 72,98,

135, 310 M.'s early life in, xi M.'s poem about, 194 M.'s residence in, 181, 232 papers of M. and Gumilev in, 9 poem published in, 184 purge in, 120

second short trip to, 316, 318 Spanish scholars in, 208 two-day trip to, 304-8, 311-12, 314-15, 317-18

Leonov (biologist), 94, 217 Leonov, Leonid Maximovich, 57, 243 Lermontov, Mikhail Yureivich, 30Я, 243

recitation of work of, 220 Lezhnev, Isai Grigorievich, 241-43 Liashko, N., 166 Linde, Fedor F., 153-54 Linguistic dualism, 89 Literary Fund, 290-91, 307, 353

dependence on, 381 Livshitz, Benedikt Konstantinovich, 213,

236, 238 Lominadze, Besso, 147, 179-80

Lozina-Lozinski, Alexei Konstantinovich,

237

Lozinski, Mikhail Leonidovich, 305-7, 316,318 as prepared for arrest, 77 Lubianka (Moscow), 29-32» 40,74-78, 93. 105. 259» 292 Bely's wife in, 156 Efros imprisoned in, 341 injections used by, 394 "inner" guard of, 29, 66-67 interrogator of, see Christophorovich research section of, 80-81 solitary confinement in, 75 useless dossiers of, 316 Luppol, Ivan Kapitonovich, 130, 259, 281 Lysenko, Trofim Denisovich, 313

Maikov, Apollon Nikolayevich, 239 Makovski, Sergei Konstantinovich, 175 Malkin, Boris Fedorovich, 48 Mallarme, Stephane, 239-40 Maly Yaroslavets, 319-20 Mandelstam, Alexander (Shuxa) (M.'s brother), 40-41, 221, 292 as gambler, 269

M.'s death certificate with, 373» 377 temperament of, 125 text of M.'s letter to, 373 Mandelstam, Emil Veniaminovich (M.'s father), xi, 243, 307, 311-12 "Bublik" and, 221, 223-24 death of, 312 illness of, 269 M.'s last meeting with, 311 Mandelstam, Evgeni Emilievich (M.'s brother), 9, 269, 310-12 nature of M.'s relationship with, 307-8 petitioners for release of, 113, 115-16 temperament of, 125 Writers' Union call to, 302 Mandelstam, Flora Osipovna (M.'s mother), xi, 66, 269 Makovski's account of, 175 Mandelstam, Osip Emilievich (M.) ban on his name, 139 death of, 144, 228, 299, 348, 376-80, 382- 386, 388-91, 396-97 death certificate, 373, 377, 389-90 his presentiments, 157-58 official responsibility, 355-56 potential witnesses, 382-84, 390 stories written about, 384-85 early life of, xi-xii birth, xi, 27

education, xi, 239, 241, 247 exiled to Cherdyn, 22, 38-70

community of exiles, 61-64, 95, 210- 211

contributions collected for travel 38-39

his attempt to escape, 59-60 journey under guard, 40-41, 50-58 reporting in to secret police, 118 sentence of exile, 32, 51 Fadeyev's attempt to help, 352-53

first arrest of, 4-25, 236, 271 Bukharin's reaction, 21-22, 145 his preparedness, 77, 228 justification for, ix-12 "night operation," 4-9 witnesses, 6-7 forced-labor sentence of, 379-97 communal pit burial, 382-83 Dombrovski's encounter, 387-88 five-year sentence, 372 his fear of being poisoned, 380, 391,

his^fetter about, 373 scene of his death, 228, 377, 380, 382, 388-91, 396-97 health of, 143-44, 16372, 182-83, 206, 391 fractured shoulder bone, 59-60 obsessions, 394

post-imprisonment aberrations, 56-58,

60, 62, 64-70, 76, 78, 99-101 psychiatric consultation, 123-26 recuperation after heart attacks, 290- 292

his period of silence, 162-63, 180 his rehabilitation applied for, 373-76, 396

his sentence of exile commuted, 94-95

cause of, 145-49 imprisonment of, 23-33,66-68, 74-86 "civilized treatment" of prisoners, 23 interview with his wife, 30-31,68, 74, 76,83

methods of psychic torment, 74-78 public reaction, 25-28 second, 369-72 personal characteristics of abhorrence of power, 103-4 guilelessness, 3, 84 Bterary taste, 225-29, 235-43 physical description, 306 reserve, 66

speaking voice, 276-77 poetry anthology edited by, 237 possible betrayor of, 86, 89-92 post-exile period of, in Moscow, 213- 224, 277-85, 290-93 "convicted person" status, 283-84 illegal residence, 290-93 illusory quality, 224 Moscow apartment retained, 213-14 ownership of Moscow apartment, 282 at Samatikha rest home, 356-63 scene of his arrest, 228, 235, 361-63 union arrangements for stay, 353~54.

356-58 used as a trap, 367-69 Savelovo refuge of, 292-95, 298-308,

314-1? , .„ description of village, 293 poetry-reading project, 302-4 short trips outside, 298-300, 304-8, 311, 314-18 second arrest of, 9, 57, 65, 339, 341-42, 361-63, 367-69, 388 cleared of charges, 184 confiscation of his diary, 142

reading materials for, 228 report compiled against, 367-68 warrant for arrest, 361 sworn enemy of, 101-7 as translator, 8, 176-78, 185, 236 denied work, 281

destruction campaign against, 178-79 during exile, 130, 137-39 of French poetry, 176-77, 239-40 his wife's collaboration, vii Voronezh period of, 60, 88,94-101, 118— 144, 180-214, 216-17, 234 adjutant's view, 91 Akhmatova's poem about, 217-18 archiving his compositions, 271-76 attempt at ode to Stalin, 198-200, 203 as "breathing space," 22 character of the town, 141-43 choice of town for exile, 94 composition of notebooks, 71 early manuscripts compiled, 20 end of his sentence, 210-14 funds to cover, 39, 137-42, 144, 181-

183, 261 housing conditions, 128-34 journey to Voronezh, 97-101 lecture on Acmeism, 174 length of stanzas composed, 267-68 notion to return, 284 official papers granted, 118-22 Rudakov's companionship, 9, 271 rumor of his death, 47, 389 visits from police spies, 204-6, 209-10 works of, 22-23, 45-47, 171-94, 366 "albums" compiled in labor camp, 386-87

American collection, xii, 251, 260 Bukharin's role in publication, 113,

117-18 Canal poem, 46-47, 300 chronology, 190-91 confiscated by police, 8^9 copies requested by police agents, 35, 88

copy burned by his brother, 308 derivative (doggerel, comic verse),

72, 214, 35»-52 early, xi-xii

expressions of "world sense," 262-64 first readings (first listeners), 71-73 "Italian themes," 247, 249-50 manuscripts destroyed by authorities, 148-49

manuscripts salvaged from police,

15-17, 20-21, 271 method of composition, 70-71, 180-

181, 184-88 moratorium on publication, 222, 258- 2j9

period of the twenties, 171-77 poetty cycles, 193-94 politics of magazine publication, 138- 139

posthumous publication, 122, 375-76 preserved by archiving, 268-76 readings of dangerous poems, 91-92

right to destroy manuscripts, 46-47 superstition about poetic references, 198

Tikhonov's promised preface, 234 voice of the outsider, 178 See also Stalin, Josef—M.'s poem about; individual works by name Mandelstam, Tania Grigoriev (M.'s sister-

in-law), 98, 308-12 Mandelstam, Tatka (M.'s niece), 282, 308-12

Marants, Fedia, 71-73, 182, 214 "Margulets," 72 Margulis, Alexander, 281 as first listener, 72 in forced-labor camp, 383 manuscripts circulated by, 222-23 Marshak, Samuil Yakovlevich, 138,163га, 318

Mass deportation, 97-98, 158, 337

as past history, 209 Mayakovslri, Vladimir Vladimirovich, 107, 120-21, 188, 327 death of, 27, 158, 325 as poet of rival school, 238 as State poet, 226 Mei, Lev Alexandrovich, 238 Melikez, 296

Meyerhold, Vsevolod Emilievich, 167,

289, 326, 374 MGB (secret police), $n, 254 in Perm, 99

residence permits granted by, 136 role of, in exile system, 211-13 Midnight in Moscow (Mandelstam), 176 Migai, Sergei Ivanovich, 142 Mikhoels, Solomon Mikhailovich, 122, 148, 300

Mikoyan Anastas Ivanovich, 375 "Minus twelve" sentence, 94 Mirbach, Wilhelm (Count von Mirbach-

Harff), 102, 104-9 "Mitrofan" (tenant in Voronezh), 128-29 Molotov, Viacheslav Mikhailovich, 117,

160, 180, 316 "Moral Experience of the Soviet Era,

The" (Elsberg), 37 "Morning of Acmeism, The" (Mandelstam), 263, 268 Morozov, Alexander Antonovich

(Sasha), 160, 240 Morozov, Pavel ("Pavlik"), 213 Moscow, 109-12, 179, 182, 260, 341-43 Akhmatova's trip to, 3-4 "arranging things" by trips to to mail parcels, 342-43 after M.'s second arrest, 362 trips from Kalinin, 334-35 trips from Savelovo, 298-300, 303-4 during Voronezh exile, 127, 129-30, 137, 140, 43-45, 182, 211, 271-72 books sold in, 235 "Buddhist," 248 city transportation, 130 civilized values absent from, 302 electronic eavesdropping in, 33-34

famine in, 99

lodging in friends' apartments in, 346-J2 M. not published in, 173 M.'s sentence commuted by, 94 May Day celebrations in, 359 merchant quarter of, 265 Pasternak's position in, 154 permission to live in, see Residence permits

police victims on perimeter of, 294

Rolland in, 380-81

show trials in, 336

See also Herzen House; Kremlin;

Lubianka; Mandelstam, Osip—first arrest of; imprisonment of; post- exile period of Moscow Komsomol (newspaper), 89, 306

Moskva (magazine), 122Я, 283, 351 Mravian, Askanaz Axtemeivich, 250 My Sister Life (Pasternak), 190, 236

Nakanune (emigre newspaper), 138 Narbut, Sima, 39

Narbut, Vladimir Ivanovich, 95-96, 281 death of, 383 as editor, 138 "sanctuary" named by, 4 "Natalia" (Vasilia Shklovski's sister), 3SO-SI

"Neo-Acmeist" poetry, 154 Nest of Simple Folk, 137 Nesterov, Mikhail Vasilievich, 290 "New age" ("new era"), 235, 325 capitulation before, 162-69 failure to come to terms with, 176-79 historical inevitability of, 44 "new law" of, 95-96 "new" morality of, 308 "new people" of, 82 sickness of, 48 New Economic Policy (NEP), 14,165 New order (social structure), 251-58

resistance to change and, 253-55 "New Verse" (Mandelstam), 192-93 Nikolskoye, 142

Nikulin, Lev Veniaminovich, 278 Nilender, Vladimir Nikolayevich, 223 Noise of Time, The (Mandelstam), 170, 173, 243, 255 fur coat theme of, 193 manuscript of, 270 publication of, xii, 111 rejection of, 241 See also Egyptian Stamp

"Ode to Stalin" (Mandelstam), 198-203

"free" poetic by-products of, 198, 200-1 "Old Crimea" (Mandelstam), 85 On Poetry (Mandelstam), xii, 174 "On the Nature of Words" (Mandel­stam), 229 "On the Reader" (Mandelstam), 264-65 Orlov, Vladimir Nikolayevich, 375-76 Oshanin, Lev Ivanovich, 149 "Osip" (guard), 51-53, 5&-59

Otsup, Nikolai Avdeyevich, 110

"Pack of Hounds" (Barbier), 176-77 Pasternak, Boris Leonidovich, 83, 126, 131, 144-54, i6CH-6I, 17871, 259 his manner of speaking, 156-57 letter from, 276

literary establishment's break with, 151 literary persecution of, 225-26 M.'s copies of, 236 at Peredelkino, 298-99 as petitioner for M.'s release, 25-27, 145 refuses to sanction executions, 108 religion of, 262 on Stalin poem, 161 Stalin's conversation with, 145-49, 214 technical audience of, 249 unproductive period of, 162 on Voronezh poems, 190 See also Dr. Zhivago Pasternak, Zinaida Nikolayevna, 45, 298- 299

"Patriarch, The" (Mandelstam), 198 Paustovski, Konstantin Georgievich, 318 Pavlenko, Peter Andreyevich, 84-85, 233, 348

Peredelkino, 298-99, 349 Perm, 69,97,99-100 Peshkova, Ekaterina Pavlovna, 23-25 Petrograd (Petersburg), see Leningrad Petrov, Evgeni Petrovich (Kateyev), 300

The Twelve Chairs, 325-26, 328 Piast, Vladimir Alexeyevich, 12, 334 salvaged manuscripts of, 8, 19-20 Pillar and Affirmation of the Truth

(Florenski), 230 Pilniak, Boris Andreyevich, 113 Pisarev, Dmitri Ivanovich, 172 Podvoiski, Nikolai Ilyich, 322-24 "Poem Without a Hero" (Akhmatova),

30, 70, 202 Poems (Mandelstam), xii, 113 Poets' Cafe (Moscow), 104 Poets' Guild, 4,45 Poets' Library, 234, 351, 375 Polezhayev, Alexander Ivanovich, 238 "Political Red Cross," 23 Polivanov, E. D., 218 Polonski, Yakov Petrovich, 238 Postupalski, Igor Stefanovich, 27 Pravda (newspaper), 84,158, 301, 336-37 literary editor of, 242-43 story commissioned by, 317 subscription to, 336 "Preservation," see "Isolation but preser­vation" order "Preserve My Speech" (Mandelstam),

71, !94

Prishvin, Mikhail Mikhailovich, 194 Prokofiev, Alexander Andreyevich, 374 "Prophet" (Lermontov), 220 Punin, Nikolai Nikolayevich, 3, 220, 314 Pushkin, Alexander Sergeyevich, ix-x, 30, 52, 66, 100, 243, 357 Akhmatova's interest in, 229 misinterpretation of, 264

Symbolist revival of, 238 Yakhontov's performances of, 120

Rakovski, Christian Georgievich, 193 RAPP (Russian Association of Proletar­ian Writers), 152, 166, 177 fall of, 172, 233 Raskolnikov, Fedor Fedorovich, 105-0.

IIO-II

Raznochintsi, 176, 179 Razumova, Professor, 290 Rehabilitation, period of, 48-50, 280, 389 informers' response to, 48 M.'s rehabilitation applied for, 373-76, 396

suspicions about, 33 Reisner, Larisa Mikhailovna, 49, 106

as revolutionary woman, 108-12 Residence permits, 52, 118-22,128,134-36 cancellation of, 295

loss of Moscow permit, 121-22, 282-85, 290

during rehabilitation period, 374 temporary Moscow permit, 131 Rolland, Rf main, 364, 380-81, 389 Rossia (magazine), 240-42 Rozhdestvenski, Vsevolod Alexandro­vich, 169

Rudakov Sergei Borisovich, 130, 132, 271-75.291 exile of, 9, 72, 141, 271 _# his assistance in archiving, 272-75 temperament of, 273 Russian Art (periodical), 173-74 Russian Association of Proletarian Writ­ers, see RAPP Russian Civil War (1918-20), 67,97,

232,320 Russian Orthodox Church, 10 Russian Revolution of 1917, 153, 176, 262, 271, 307, 34<5 fear engendered by, 85 intelligentsia in, 332

military officers arrested' during, 110-11 poems about, 173, 192 preparation for, 170-71 seductive ideology of, 126 terror of, 115

Sacco-Vanzetti Case, 10 St. Isaac's Cathedral (Leningrad), 309 St. Petersburg, see Leningrad Samatikha, see Mandelstam, Osip—at

Samatikha rest home Sargidzhan, Amir (Sergei Petrovich

Borodin), 90 Savelovo, see Mandelstam, Osip—

Savelovo refuge of Schwab (German flutist), 186-87 Scriabin, Alexander, 72, 157, 174-75, 269 Second Book (Mandelstam) censorship of, 192 compilation of, 269 publication of, xii, 138 "Second Voronezh Notebook"

(Mandelstam), 72, 191-93, 217

arrangement of poems in, 191 composition of, 185 "key" poem of, 196 Secret police, see Cheka; GPU; MGB; Yezhov

Seifullina, Lidia Nikolayevna, 24-25 Selvinski, Ilia Lvovich, 318 Serapion Brothers, 420 Severianin, Igor Vasilievich, 7 Shaginian, Marietta Sergeyevna, 84, 204- 205, 299

Shalamov, Varlam Tikhonovich, 384 Shchepkin, Mikhail Semionovich, 161 Shcherbakov, Alexander Sergeyevich, 140 Shengeli, Georgi Arkadievich, 145 Shervinski, Sergei Vasilievich, 322 Shevchenko, Taras Grigorievich, 188, 357 Shkiriatov, Matvei Fedorovich, 178 Shklovski, Nikita, 315, 346-47 Shklovski, Varia, 346-47 Shklovski, Vasilisa, 48, 299, 315, 346-51 on Bely, 155 as hostess, 347 as M.'s neighbor, 180-81 phobia of, 123 Shklovski, Victor Borisovich, 37, 83, 206, 299» 303, 346-52 on Babel's fear, 321 on change, 253

his opinion of comic verse, 351-52 M.'s death and, 377 new apartment of, 278 trousers of, 315 Shopen, Ivan Ivanovich, 227 Short Course (Stalin), 231, 246 Shostakovich, Dmitri, 346-48 Shtempel, Natasha, 71-72, 182, 203, 206 doggerel about, 214 M.'s letters rescued by, 275 Rudakov's meeting with, 273 Simonov, Konstantin Mikhailovich, 368- 369

Sinani, Boris Naumovich, 154 "Slate Ode, The" (Mandelstam), 171 Sluchevski, Konstantin Konstantinovich, 4,238

Slutski, Boris Abramovich, 385 Solikamsk, 52, 54, 58,60 Sologub, Fedor, 183

Soloviev, Vladimir Sergeyevich, 247, 264

influence of, 230 Solzhenitsyn, Alexander Isayevich, 246, 289, 339 publication of, 234, 287 survival of, 378 Soviet Writers, Union of, 7, 122, 208, 246, 300, 351-54 certification by, 119 as employment referral service, 137, 140

expulsion from, 37 housing permits and, 131-32, 290 indifference of, 146, 148 institution of, 27

poem commissioned by, 46-47, 300 poetry readings sponsored by, 302-3

rehabilitation application before, 374 reports supplied by, 368-69 rest period arranged by, 353-54, 357-58 Spasski, Sergei Dmitrievich, 316 Spies, police (agents), 24, 204-6, 283Я, 348,364-65 , GPU hears complaint about, 209-10 loyalty of, 86-87 M. surrounded by, 35-37 open surveillance by, 17-18 rule for dealing with, 204 Stalin, Josef, 63, 235-36, 258-59, з"->2, 322-24, 339-40, 356 Bukharin's communication with, 112, 145, 388

contemporary adherents of, 254 death of, 296, 298, 313, 354 denunciation of, 64Я, 373n distant relative of, 212 on Gorki, 339

his personal interest in M.'s case, 303 historical necessity for, 287-89 Lezhnev's call from, 242 M.'s arrest authorized by, 367 M.'s hallucinations about, 68 M.'s poem about, 12, 23, 25-26, 81-84, 14&-49, 158-62, 199 composition, 158 copy in police hands, 85-86 criminal charges based on, 32-33 danger of reading it aloud, 90-92, 149 first draft, 31-32, 158 full text, 13

memorized by police chief, 82 poem of appeasement, see "Ode to Stalin"

threatened execution over, 50-51, 83 viewed by his literary contempo­raries, 160-61 name adopted by, 93Я open disrespect for, 345 Pasternak's talk with, 45-49, 214 proletarian attitude toward, 337 Holland's influence with, 380-81, 389 sentimental view of, 199, 220 on surveillance, 34 Vishnevski received by, 261 waves of terror staged by, 317 writings of, 139, 231, 235, 246, 258 Startsev, Abel Isaakovich, 137 State Publishing House (Gosizdat), 20, 159, 178Я, 314 "Bublik's" trips to, 222, 224 Leningrad (Lengiz), 270 translation work for, 137 Stavski, Vasili P., 131, 214, 216, 302, 355 his role in M.'s second arrest, 367-69 inaccessibility of, 290, 300 Kostyrev and, 281 rest home suggested by, 353 Stenich, Liuba, 315, 317-18 Stenich, Valentin Iosifovich, 314-17

imminent arrest of, 315-16 Stoletov (alleged "wrecker"), 212 Stolpner, Boris Grigorievich, 223 Stone (Mandelstam), xii, 192-93, 395

Kablukov's copy of, 175, 275-76 Stopiatnitsa, 344-45 Strunino, 54-55, 341-46 notes from prisoners passing through,

textile works in, 343-45 Strove, Gleb Petrovich, 247 Suicide, 159, 261, 292, 297 as last resort, 56-58 M.'s attempted, 76-77 Suicide, The (Erdman), 57, 326, 328 Surkov, Alexei Alexandrovich, 26,137,

234,290 on Dr. Zhivago, 83 financial assistance from, 302 on Lev Gumilev, 212 on residence permits, 121-22 during revision period, 368-69, 374 as union head, 354 Surveillance, 17-19, 33-39, 92 by chauffeurs, 354 mutual, 34

system of mass, 35-38 See also "Adjutant" agents; Denuncia­tions; Informers; Spies; "Tails" Sverdlovsk, 52-44 Symbolism (Bely), 156 Symbolists, 154-56, 177, 263-66 Berdiayev's tie with, 263-64, 266, 268 M. attacked by, 149 in poetry anthology, 237 public taste re-educated by, 238 Syrtsov, Sergei Ivanovich, 179

Tager, Elena Mikhailovna, 64 "Tails" (police agents), 17-19, 179 open surveillance by, 18-19 young people as, 207 Tairov, Alexander Yakovlevich, 167 Tarasenkov, Anatoli Kuzmich, 85,172 Tashkent University, 94, 366 author as teacher at, 37 Marxism-Leninism study room of, 244-

Tadin, Vladimir Yevgrafovich, 350 "Third Voronezh Notebook"

(Mandelstam), 71, 191-93, 217 Tikhonov, Nikolai Semionovich, 232-35, 306,316, 332 in war against literature, 233-35 Tiufiakov (police agent), 385-86 Tiutchev, Fedor Ivanovich, 238, 288 "To Sleep in Petersburg" (Mandelstam), 194

"To the German Language

(Mandelstam), 72, 387 Tolstoi, Count Alexei Konstantinovich,

Tolsto?,³