Episode Details

Anna Akhmatova watched the Soviet state execute her ex-husband, imprison her son, and ban her poetry for decades. She refused to leave Russia. She refused to stop writing. And she outlived the regime that tried to silence her.

This episode tells the story of her extraordinary endurance through revolution, terror, and war, and explains how her poem Requiem became one of the most powerful witnesses to Stalinist oppression ever written.

• How she memorized Requiem line by line to keep it from the secret police
• The personal costs of Zhdanov's campaign against her work
• Her relationships with Gumilyov, Modigliani, and Isaiah Berlin
• Why her poetry became a symbol of resistance for an entire generation