“You will hear thunder and remember me,
and think: she wanted storms…”
― Anna Akhmatova
What an amazing woman. Poet Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966), having lived through war, revolution and Stalinist terror, had storms aplenty. Condemned by Russian totalitarianism, desired by fellow writers and admired by other great Russian figures of the time, from Pasternak to Mandelstam, Marina Tsvetaeva to Joseph Brodsky to Shostakovich. She stayed in Russia while many other intellectuals fled or committed suicide or were killed. She stayed and bore witness to the terror and the tragedy.
Bronagh Slevin 