During World War II, Akhmatova was in Leningrad during the Siege, and she read poems over the radio to raise the morale of the local population.Īfter the war her poetry was deemed harmful for the Soviet nation, and she was banned from publishing.

She dedicated her most famous poem, Requiem, to those women who stood with her with scant hope to ever again meet their relatives. Akhmatova spent 17 months (!) standing in lines at an NKVD prison and trying to find out his fate. They even used metaphors comparing nature or humans with inanimate things.ĭuring the Red Terror, Akhmatova’s husband Nikolai Gumilev was killed during Stalin’s Great Terror her son, Lev Gumilev, was arrested.

These poets were opponents of symbolists (and Blok) they refused to use ephemeral images, but called a spade a spade. At the dawn of her ‘career’ she was a part of the Silver Age poetic movement known as Acmeism. Akhmatova is probably one of the most famous female Russian poets.