Leningrad Poetry 1953-1975 - The - Emily Lygo PDF

Russian Transformations: Literature, Thought, Culture
Emily Lygo
Leningrad Poetry 1953–1975

The Thaw Generation
Peter Lang
Series Editor:
Andrew Kahn, University of Oxford
Volume 2
PETER LANG
Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Wien
Emily Lygo

The Thaw Generation
PETER LANG
Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Wien
Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche National-
bibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Lygo, Emily, 1977-

Leningrad poetry 1953-1975: the Thaw generation / Emily Lygo.
p. cm. -- (Russian transformations: literature, thought, culture
; v. 2)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Russian poetry--Russia (Federation)--Saint Petersburg--History and

criticism. 2. Russian poetry--20th century--History and criticism. 3.
Saint Petersburg (Russia)--Intellectual life--20th century. 4. Saint
Petersburg (Russia)--In literature. 5. Poets, Russian--Russia
(Federation)--Saint Petersburg--Biography. I. Title.
PG3505.L4L94 2009
891.71‘440994721--dc22
2009044813
ISSN 1662-2545
ISBN 978-3-0353-0011-6
© Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2010

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Printed in Germany
In loving memory of Olly
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Note on Transliteration of Russian Words and Names xi
Introduction 1
Part 1 11
Chapter 1
The Post-Stalin Thaw 1953–1964 13
Chapter 2
After the Thaw, 1965–1975 83
Part 2 131
Chapter 3
Officially Published Poetry and Aleksandr Kushner 133
Chapter 4
Viktor Sosnora 173
Chapter 5
Dmitry Bobyshev 233
Chapter 6
Iosif Brodsky 275
viii
Conclusions 323
Appendix 1
Principal LITOs and Literary Groups in Leningrad 1953–1975 325
Appendix 2
Unofficial Groups of Poets in Leningrad 1953–1975 329
Appendix 3
Statistics Concerning the Admission of Poets to the Leningrad
Writers’ Union 1953–1975 331
Bibliography 335
Index 353
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the Sub-Faculty of Russian at the University of

Oxford for the help and support I received while I was writing the thesis
upon which this book is based. Special thanks go to Gerry Smith, who
patiently and attentively supervised the thesis and continues to give advice
and provide inspiration. In Russia, many people who aided me during
research trips, in particular the staff of TsGALI, St Petersburg, Lyudmila
Zubova, Vyacheslav Dolinin and the staff at Memorial, St Petersburg,
Aleksey Shel'vakh, Elena Dunaevskaya, Valentina Beletskaya, Aleksandr
Markov, and Kirill Alekseev. I benefited from enlightening conversations
with Marco Sabbatini and Stanislav Savitsky, who share this research sub-
ject. My colleagues at the University of Exeter, Katharine Hodgson and
Carol Adlam, have helped me make it through to the end. Catriona Kelly,
Andrei Zorin and Jennifer Baines read the manuscript thoroughly and
made invaluable suggestions, and Andrew Kahn has been a generous and
supportive editor, always encouraging and optimistic. I thank all my family,
who have been unfailing in their belief in me, but dedicate this specially
to Olly, wishing that he could be here to see it finished. Last and greatest
thanks go to Simon, for his wisdom, insight, and love of poetry.
Transliteration of Russian Words and Names
I have used the British Standard System of Cyrillic Translation throughout.

Although in the West Iosif Brodsky is better known as Joseph Brodsky, for
the sake of consistency I have used the earlier form, Iosif, throughout. In
cases where a particular spelling of a Russian name has become standard
and recognised in the West, I have used this form, e.g. Lev Loseff.
Introduction
In the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, there was a flowering of poetry in Russia
that can be compared in its scale and significance to the Silver Age of
Russian poetry from the end of the nineteenth century to the early twenti-
eth century. The most famous poet by far to emerge from this era was Iosif
Brodsky, whose career was crowned with the accolades of Nobel Laureate
(1987) and Poet Laureate of the United States of America (1991). In his
Nobel Lecture, Brodsky spoke of the generation of Russian poets to which
he belonged:
That generation – the generation born precisely at the time when the Auschwitz cre-
matoria were working full blast, when Stalin was at the zenith of his godlike, absolute
power, which seemed sponsored by Mother Nature herself – that generation came
into the world, it appears, in order to continue what, theoretically, was supposed to
be interrupted in those crematoria and in the anonymous common graves of Stalin’s
archipelago. The fact that not everything got interrupted, at least not in Russia, can
be credited in no small degree to my generation, and I am no less proud of belonging
to it than I am of standing here today.1
He accepted the Nobel Prize as recognition of the services that his genera-
tion – and not he alone – had rendered to culture.
Brodsky was one of a great number of poets who appeared in Leningrad
at this time, but only a handful of his contemporaries have become at all
well known, often through their friendship with Brodsky or because of
his endorsement of their work. Others remain little known outside rather
narrow circles of readership and their work has as yet received hardly any
critical attention. Indeed, Brodsky’s fame has tended to eclipse the work
1 Joseph Brodsky, ‘Nobel Lecture’, given in 1987 and published as ‘Uncommon Visage:
The Nobel Lecture’, in his On Grief and Reason (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1996),
pp. 44–58 (p. 55).
2 Introduction
and reputations of his contemporaries who remained in the USSR and

even of those in emigration. This has been the case especially in the West,
where information about poets working but not publishing in the USSR
was limited until the late 1980s, and a feud between Brodsky and Dmitry
Bobyshev (b. 1936) resulted in a lamentable and unwarranted bias against
Bobyshev’s work which profoundly affected his reception at first in the
West and later in post-Soviet Russia as well. I hope that this volume will
go some way to redressing these imbalances and distortions.
After Stalin’s death in 1953, writers found themselves, again in Brodsky’s
words, ‘in an empty – indeed a terrifyingly wasted – place’.2 This is no
exaggeration of the extent to which the years of Stalinism had debased
Russian literature in the USSR. In the purges of the 1930s, writers were
physically annihilated and mentally broken; by the late 1940s, years of
repressive censorship and political intimidation had ensured that, except
for a window of reprieve during the Great Patriotic War, lyric poetry had
effectively disappeared from published literature in the USSR. Although
during these years poets continued to write lyric poetry, it was all ‘for the
desk drawer’ and remained in the private domain. To many young poets in
the 1950s the preceding decades appeared to be a hiatus in a poetic tradi-
tion stretching back to the eighteenth century.
Not long after Stalin’s death, lyric poetry began to return to the pages
of Soviet journals and resume a place in Soviet Russian literature. In fact,
the Khrushchev Thaw, during which it seemed that ‘Socialism with a
human face’ was possible and that Soviet society was facing up to the mis-
takes of the preceding decades, became closely associated with lyric poetry
through the famous young Moscow poets Evgeny Evtushenko (b. 1933),
Bella Akhmadulina (b. 1937), Andrey Voznesensky (b. 1933) and others.
Lyric poetry, in other words, was in fashion. It carried a complex knot of
associations during this period: while poetry was endorsed by the Party
and authorities, at the same time it became a key medium of expression
for the dissident movement, the inception of which is usually dated as the
2 Loc. cit.
Introduction 3
1960s. The young Moscow ‘star’ poets, who published and appeared at
official readings, have been described as ‘permitted dissidents’.
The fashion for poetry that developed after Stalin’s death was not only
a response of young people to the Thaw; other groups in society were also
involved in restoring lyric poetry to the Soviet canon. Liberal members of
the Writers’ Union saw the political thaw as a chance to expand the range
of literature that could be published and, in particular, to reintroduce lyric
poetry to Soviet literature. The fashion for poetry was also cultivated by
the authorities: in the early 1950s, the Kremlin issued instructions to all
local branches of the Writers’ Union to improve the state of Soviet poetry,
which was deemed to have fallen behind other genres in its development.
The Union branch in Leningrad responded to this central instruction
with far-reaching changes to its work with young writers that aimed to
attract more youthful talent into Soviet literature. This book charts how
the actions of these different groups in society combined to produce a
poetry movement in Leningrad that began in the 1950s and came to be
closely identified with the Khrushchev Thaw.
Since Leningrad poetry of the Thaw period was nurtured at different
levels, including official policy, grass-roots literary workshops, and infor-
mal groups, any comprehensive account of poetry in Leningrad at this
time must describe both official and unofficial activities. Such an inclusive
approach to the subject is especially important for the earlier Thaw period
of the 1950s and early 1960s because, while there was always some distinc-
tion between official and unofficial groups of poets, these were far from
mutually exclusive at this time. Individuals could belong to both camps,
many friendships and associations spanned the two, and a lot of people
did not really distinguish between them.3
The distinction between official and unofficial poetry grew more appar-
ent in the latter half of the 1960s, when the literary authorities changed their
3 The proximity of official and unpublished poets is reflected in some contemporary

publications in the West, in which they appear side by side. See, for example: Olga
Carlisle, Poets on Street Corners (New York: Random House, 1968); George Reavey,
The New Russian Poets (New York: October House, 1968); Suzanne Massie, The
Living Mirror: Five Poets from Leningrad (London: Victor Gollancz, 1972).
4 Introduction
policies towards young poets to become far less inclusive and encouraging.
This shift in policy coincided to some degree with the appearance of a new
generation of young poets who did not enjoy the encouragement and spon-
sorship of the authorities as their older counterparts had. While the poets
who emerged in the 1950s believed that they could join Soviet literature and
still write with integrity, this younger generation found that there was no
prospect for them to pursue professional careers without writing political
hack-work. They compensated for the lack of professional opportunities
by developing their own underground and unofficial literary milieu, and
came to rely increasingly upon samizdat (self-publishing) and tamizdat
(publishing in the West) in order to reach an audience. In this way, the
association between dissidence and poetry became strengthened. Across
the 1970s and 1980s, the Third Wave of emigration from the USSR took
place, with Brodsky and Bobyshev among the Leningrad writers who left
the USSR and joined Russian literature abroad.
Not surprisingly, changes as significant as those in Soviet literature
and society after 1953 led to changes in the kind of poetry written and
published in Leningrad. In the early years of the Thaw, changes in policy
transformed published poetry: liberal writers in the Union petitioned
for there to be more lyric poetry published with a wider range of subjects
and emotions; the appointment of more liberal editors to key positions
in journals facilitated the publication of a wider range of poetry; and the
literary authorities officially endorsed an expansion in poetry’s themes
and forms. The assimilation of new young writers also helped improve
the quality and diversity of what was published. Essentially, in line with
the changes in official Party policy introduced in the wake of the Secret
Speech, the interpretation of Socialist Realism in poetry broadened at this
time. Clearly, there were still parameters that dictated what was and was
not acceptable for publication, but these are nowhere explicitly stated. In
this study, I elucidate these from discussions held by the Writers’ Union
and analysis of the published poems themselves.
Too little scholarly attention has been given to published Soviet poetry
of the post-Stalin period and to the editorial policies that shaped it. There
has been a tendency to assume that all published Soviet literature must be
overtly political, interesting only as evidence of Party-controlled literature
Introduction 5
and not as literature in its own right. It is true that reams of unremarkable
verse were produced in the USSR, but it is also the case that certain writ-
ers managed to find a niche for themselves by writing genuine literature
for official publication. The most important writer in such a position in
Leningrad was Aleksandr Kushner (b. 1936), who wrote and published
genuine and talented lyric poetry within the official literary world of the
USSR: he continued the Petersburg tradition of poetry during the Thaw,
forging continuity with the past and preserving its conventions.
For many other poets, the conditions for publication in the USSR,
which is to say the demands of Socialist Realism and the necessity of build-
ing a career over time as well, precluded publication of some or most of
their work in Soviet Russia. Not only those who defined themselves in
opposition to the Soviet state found themselves in this situation: members
of the Writers’ Union could also find that they were unable to publish their
original writing, and many made a living by translating or writing children’s
literature instead. If they published their poetry at all, then it was chiefly
in samizdat and tamizdat, until finally it appeared in small editions during
the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Too often it has been assumed that the division in the USSR between
published and unpublished literature coincided with the one between good
and bad literature, and this study aims to show this to be unrealistic. Part 2
of the book begins with a survey of very standard, published Soviet poetry,
and then offers an analysis of the work of Aleksandr Kushner as an example
of a talented poet publishing in the USSR. Subsequent chapters present
studies of three poets I consider to be the leading figures of their generation:
Viktor Sosnora (b. 1936), Dmitry Bobyshev, and Iosif Brodsky. Altogether,
this selection of poetry ranges from published, canonical Socialist Realism
to the work of émigrés that remained unpublished in the USSR until glas-
nost'. It underlines that the quality of poetry written was independent of
the poet’s relationship to the authorities: each developed his career and
wrote poetry differently from the others, and there are no convenient cor-
relations between political attitudes and poetic talent.
There are many fine poets of this generation; my choice of Sosnora,
Bobyshev and Brodsky as the leading figures is, of course, subjective; some
critics would certainly include Kushner in this group, and other poets who
6 Introduction
are undoubtedly worthy of attention include Vladimir Uflyand (1937–

2007), Lev Loseff (1937–2009),4 Evgeny Rein (b. 1935), Nonna Slepakova
(1936–1998), Roal'd Mandel'shtam (1932–1961), and the younger poets
Elena Shvarts (b. 1948), Sergey Stratanovsky (b. 1944) and Viktor Krivulin
(1944–2001). It seems to me, however, that the three discussed in this study
made the most profound and distinctive developments in poetry of all of
their generation. In contrast with Kushner, who preserved tradition, they
developed language and expression fully and originally. Through the use
of innovative techniques, their voices emerge with a distinctiveness that
makes them immediately recognisable. The coherence of their vision and
purpose in poetry is expressive of a sustained enquiry into poetry, language
and meaning.
On the face of it, the work of this trio has little in common, yet as
the history related in Part 1 of this study shows, these poets all began their
writing careers in the LITOs of 1950s Leningrad. All had important and
formative relationships with poets and critics of their grandparents’ genera-
tion which provided them with a link to the traditions of Russian poetry
and culture all but obliterated by the Stalinist period. Some aspects of this
history and cultural context are shared with poets outside Leningrad as
well: changes in poetry during the Thaw were found across the USSR, and
to a certain extent the literary process and poets described here are relevant
beyond this specific case study. The centralised nature of the Soviet state
meant that conditions in cities far from each other could be similar in many
ways: the Kremlin’s imperative to develop lyric poetry, the instructions of
the Secret Speech to move away from the Stalinist past, and the reappear-
ance of lyric poetry in the major ‘thick’ journals would have affected young
writers all over the USSR in the 1950s. The number of opportunities made
available to young people, the attitude of the local Party in implementing
these changes and directives, and the control it exerted over young writ-
ers’ activities, on the other hand, could vary from city to city. While there
have not been extensive studies of the literary culture during the Thaw in
4 Lev Loseff is the pseudonym of Lev Lifshits. His father, the children’s writer Vladimir
Lifshits, gave it to him when Loseff began publishing literature for children.
Introduction 7
Moscow or in the provinces, it appears that there were similarities with the
situation in Leningrad, and also some regional differences.
Moscow was the centre that offered the most opportunities for young
writers, and over the course of the 1960s many Leningraders moved there
to try to develop their careers.5 Its Gorky Literary Institute offered training
and career opportunities for young writers: Evgeny Evtushenko, Robert
Rozhdestvensky (1932–1994), Yunna Morits (b. 1937), Gennady Aigi (1934–
2006) and Bella Akhmadulina are just some of the many well-known poets
who were students there. In Moscow, as in Leningrad, there were literary
studios for young people at institutes of higher education, such as the
one at Moscow State University attended by Bakhyt Kenzheev (b. 1950),
Aleksey Tsvetkov (b. 1947) and other members of what later became known
as the ‘Moskovskoe vremya’ (‘Moscow time’) group of writers. There were
poets who lived on the fringes of the literary world and managed to build
a career very slowly, such as Oleg Chukhontsev (b. 1938), who published
individual poems in journals from the late 1950s and eventually brought
out his first collection in 1984. Underground or alternative groups of poets
existed in Moscow as in Leningrad: they included the Lianozovo school
of poets, to which Evgeny Kropovnitsky (1893–1979), Genrikh Sapgir
(1928–1999) and Igor' Kholin (1920–1999) belonged, and the Moscow
Conceptualists, a collective of artists and writers which included the famous
poet Dmitry Prigov (1940–2007). The strong human rights movement in
Moscow had close ties to some poetry groups, and figures such as Vladimir
Batshev (b. 1947) and Natal'ya Gorbanevskaya (b. 1936) were associated
with both circles.
Comparatively little has been written about the Soviet literary life of
this period in the provinces. It is clear that, then as now, the first career
move for many young writers born in other cities was to move to Moscow.
For those who stayed, however, there were local magazines and newspapers,
5 Jekaterina Young points out that Leningrad writers have asserted there were four
times more opportunities to publish in Moscow than in their own city. See ‘The
Aesthetics of the Gorozhane Group’, Slavonic and East European Review Vol. 83,
No. 1 ( January 2005), 14–37 (p. 15).
8 Introduction
sometimes local branches of the Writers’ Union, and often some kind of
career path available. In most provincial cities, however, there would have
been far fewer significant writers and less sense of a literary tradition and
culture than in Leningrad or Moscow. Anatoly Kobenkov has described
how in the 1950s, young writers in the Siberian city of Irkutsk were drawn
to members of the older generation just as their counterparts in Moscow
and Leningrad were. A group of young people, including Irkutsk’s most
famous names Valentin Rasputin and Aleksandr Vampilov, befriended the
poet Elena Zhilkina, who had been vilified in the wake of the 1946 attack
on Anna Akhmatova. They would gather at her house and listen to her, in
the same way that young people in Moscow and Leningrad gathered around
figures such as Akhmatova herself, Boris Pasternak and Lidiya Ginzburg.
They formed a group, called the ‘Tvorcheskoe ob"edinenie molodykh’ or
TOM (Creative Union of Young People), as an alternative to official lit-
erature in a similar spirit to the groups formed in Moscow and Leningrad
at the same time.6 It seems likely that the blossoming of literary culture
during the Thaw, especially among young people, was experienced in many
cities in the USSR.
In terms of its history and status, however, Leningrad was different
from other cities and its poets were aware of this. During the Thaw era,
the memory of the siege of Leningrad was still fresh, and also of the period
of Zhdanovshchina during the late 1940s when the Party had set out to
diminish the city’s prestige and its cultural life in particular. In terms of
literary history, young poets were conscious that they were heirs to the great
Petersburg tradition of poetry peculiar to their city. Although the figures
presented in this study are very different from each other, in some ways
their poetry reflects the heritage, tone, concerns and style of this tradition.
Aleksandr Kushner is the most self-consciously ‘Petersburg’ poet: his work
returns to the subjects of the city, the civilisation and intellectual history
associated with it and literary antecedents.
For this generation of Leningrad poets, Osip Mandel'shtam is argu-
ably the most important figure of the Petersburg heritage: Brodsky and
6 Anatoly Kobenkov, ‘Irkutsk: novoe polozhenie’, Znamya 1 (2001), 178–86.

Introduction 9
Kushner are among the many poets who make reference to him and are
influenced by his modernist vision of the ‘classical’ poetry of Pushkin and
the Golden Age. Dmitry Bobyshev engages with the earlier, imperial poet
Derzhavin. All, characteristically, are in intertextual dialogue with earlier
poets, and their work is informed by the Western-influenced ideals of high
culture that are associated with the city’s literature and history. Even the
Futurist-influenced Sosnora shares with his fellow Leningraders a sense
of high culture, education and a certain aloofness, in contrast with many
poets from Moscow.
In Moscow, other traditions and conditions influenced poetry: the
Conceptualists played with the language and conventions of Soviet offi-
cial rhetoric in a postmodern style that was not really found in Leningrad;
the subject of the city of Moscow and its history was important for some,
the heritage of earlier Moscow poets for others; and the presence of the
dissident and human rights movement brought its own themes. For writ-
ers in the provinces, a sense of belonging to a particular locality and often
to rural Russia was a distinguishing feature of their work. In the case of
Irkutsk this grew into the kind of patriotism and Russian nationalism
found in Rasputin’s later work, but in other cities different regional iden-
tities emerged. Such contrasts with poetry from other cities points to the
similarities that exist between the Leningraders, and the heritage that they
share, even if they have developed their work in contrasting directions.
Although they all exhibit some affinity with the Petersburg tradition,
the poets discussed in this study cannot be said to belong to a school or
a group. All would have known of each other and probably would have
encountered each other’s work in samizdat and at readings, but for the most
part they did not associate closely. Brodsky and Bobyshev were close friends
in the early Thaw, but after 1963 they were estranged by an argument that
was never resolved. Both knew Aleksandr Kushner, but did not belong to
his immediate circle of friends and fellow poets of the Mining Institute
LITO. Viktor Sosnora was certainly acquainted with Kushner through
the LITO and later the Writers’ Union, and with the others through the
forums of Leningrad poetry, but he was not particularly friendly with any
of them.
10 Introduction
There are no close connections between their styles of poetry, either.

The portrait of Leningrad poets in this book does not present a Leningrad
school: rather, the significance of the poetry written by this generation lies
in its diversity and variety. From shared beginnings in the LITOs of the
1950s, poets in Leningrad boldly assimilated the lessons of earlier poets.
They connected with their literary and cultural heritage, but developed
their poetic language in new directions and into new territories. Sosnora’s
grotesque and fantastic vision is expressed through language that continues
the experiments of the Futurists of the 1910s and 1920s; Bobyshev’s devel-
opment from abstract, meditative verse to an all-encompassing vision of
the earthly world is mirrored by the expansion of his wide-ranging, eclectic
‘Baroque’ language; and Brodsky’s borrowings from the Anglo-American
tradition and his use of prosaic style introduces a profoundly new tone
and voice to Russian poetry. It is a measure of the talent and significance
of this generation that three such contrasting poets should have emerged
from the same milieu. This study aims to introduce and contextualise these
individuals, and the many others of their generation.
Part 1
Chapter 1
The Post-Stalin Thaw 1953–1964
The Return of Lyric Poetry to the Soviet Canon
By the end of the Stalin period, Soviet poetry had become restricted to a
very narrow range of subject, tone and form, and much of it was repetitious
and uninteresting. This impoverishment in the post-war period occurred
because the Party waged war against lyric poetry – which it characterised
as overly subjective and individualistic – to such a degree that it practically
disappeared from published literature. The campaign began in 1946, when
lyric poetry suffered a fierce attack in the form of Zhdanov’s public criti-
cism of Akhmatova and, in connection with this, the closing of the journal
Leningrad.1 The ensuing period of ‘Zhdanovshchina’ in the 1940s aimed
at dismantling Leningrad’s literary heritage and prestige. In Leningrad, as
in Moscow, fear of denunciation and arrest cowed writers into producing
hack-work for journals, and keeping any genuine literary production in
the desk drawer for posterity.
When Stalin died in March 1953, the extreme control that had been
exercised over literature, as over many aspects of life, was to some degree
lifted, and the liberal ‘Thaw’ associated with the figure of Khrushchev
began. Members of the liberal wing of the Writers’ Union saw an oppor-
tunity to broaden the range of poetry in print,2 and they tried to effect
1 The whole ‘Leningrad affair’ is described in T. M. Goryaeva, Isklyuchit' vsyakie upomi-

naniya: Dokumenty i kommentarii (Moscow: Rosspen, 1997), pp. 164–82.
2 In this context, the loose term ‘liberal’ refers to a coalition of true westernising liber-
als, anti-Stalinists, and those who favoured a return to Leninism; ‘conservative’, by
contrast, refers to the grouping of neo-Stalinists and nationalist-patriots.
14 Chapter 1
this change as soon as possible; their impetus played an important role in

bringing changes to Soviet poetry and this has been well documented.3 The
changes in Soviet poetry that occurred during the Thaw, however, were
also in part brought about by official, Party instruction and the details of
this instruction have been less well researched. In 1953, Soviet poetry was
officially criticised as being ‘behind’ other literary genres in its develop-
ment, and in order to catch up with other genres such as the novel and the
short story, it was understood that some changes to its current condition
had to be made.4
One of the most noticeable changes that poetry underwent during the
Thaw was a renewal in its popularity: it went from being the ‘backwards’
genre to being at the forefront of Soviet literature. In Leningrad in the
1950s and 1960s, as in Russia more generally, poetry experienced a dramatic
increase in popularity; so much so, that by the early 1960s, poetry readings
attracted huge audiences, poetry competitions were fiercely contested, and
in Leningrad ‘… over 6000 people [were] at work writing poetry more or
less regularly’.5 The mushrooming of poets and activity associated with
poetry was not only the result of young people’s ‘youthful temperaments’,
‘exuberance’, and ‘desire to be open and sincere in literature’,6 just as the
political Thaw was not only a product of the will of the people. Poetry
grew in popularity in part due to ‘top-down’ instructions that shaped or at
least facilitated its development. This chapter will examine both the factors
which led to this boom in the popularity of poetry, and the manifestations
3 See, for example, Hayward and Crowley, Soviet Literature in the Sixties: An
International Symposium (London: Methuen, 1965); and V. Shlapentokh, Soviet
Intellectuals and Political Power: The Post-Stalin Era (London and New York: I. B.
Tauris, 1990).
4 ‘Stenogramma diskussii leningradskikh pisatelei o lirike’, TsGALI St Petersburg:
f. 371; op. 1; dd. 194–5.
5 Massie, The Living Mirror, p. 27. This enthusiasm for poetry is also described in:
M. Slonim, Soviet Russian Literature: Writers and Problems 1917–1967 (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 315–17; Carlisle, Poets on Street Corners, pp. 2–6;
Shlapentokh, Soviet Intellectuals and Political Power, pp. 112–13.
6 Deming Brown, Soviet Russian Literature since Stalin (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1978), p. 106.
of its resulting proliferation in Leningrad, which was significant enough

to be termed a poetry ‘movement’.
Two significant events occasioned debate about the state of Soviet
poetry in the early 1950s: a conference on lyric poetry at the Leningrad
Branch of the Writers’ Union in 1953;7 and the Second All-Union Congress
of Soviet Writers held in 1954.8 Debates at these events, and discussions that
were conducted contemporaneously within the Writers’ Union and in the
press, give indications of the literary policy governing Soviet, and specifi-
cally Leningrad poetry at the very beginning of the Khrushchev Thaw.
From 23 to 25 November 1953 a discussion of lyric poetry was held in
the Leningrad Branch of the Writers’ Union. The proceedings opened with
a presentation by the poet Anatoly Chivilikhin (1915–1957), who described
how Soviet poetry had been officially criticised for lagging behind other
literary genres in its Socialist Realist development. He said that the criti-
cism was a serious cause for concern, and called upon the speakers and
audience present to try to identify the causes of the slow development of
Soviet poetry; for his part, he suggested that the problem had arisen because
in their work poets had concentrated too much on the representation of
the reality of post-war reconstruction in the USSR and had neglected the
‘other reality’ of everyday feelings.
This opening was a propitious start for the more liberal members of the
Writers’ Union, who hoped that lyric poetry might be restored to the Soviet
canon in the new, post-Stalin era. Not all the speakers, however, held such
advanced views; much of the conference was dominated by conservatives
who insisted that poetry continue to mirror the Soviet reality of the fac-
tory and the collective farm, and glorify the achievements of the Bolshevik
Revolution and the Great Patriotic War. Despite criticism from Moscow,
many poets were reluctant to admit the necessity for change. When, in an
impromptu speech at the end of the first day, a student (whose name is not

f. 371; op. 1; dd. 194–5.
8 Vtoroi vsesoyuznyi s"ezd sovetskikh pisatelei: Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow: Sovetskii
pisatel', 1955).
16 Chapter 1
recorded) criticised the inertia of the establishment, the banality of form

in Soviet poetry and the weakness of literary criticism found in journals
and newspapers, Union members were outraged and indignant. His sug-
gestions and criticisms were clearly too radical to be taken seriously, and,
although they contained a good measure of truth in them, he was laughed
at and ridiculed by members of the conference.9
On the third day of this discussion, the liberal poet Ol'ga Berggol'ts
(1910–1975), gave a presentation which argued for the revival of Soviet lyric
poetry.10 Berggol'ts addressed specific points that had been made earlier
in the conference and argued persuasively against them. She challenged
the assertion made by Nikolay Gribachev (1910–1992; a conservative poet
loyal to the Party line), that all poetry should be written with standardised
intonation, and criticised his argument that poetry should be drawn only
from life, without reference to the work of earlier poets. Crucially, she
challenged the politicisation of literature which had taken place under
Stalin: ‘Is it really true that we have no need for elegant and light poetic
works that do not address weighty subjects?’ Where Gribachev had placed
the self-expression of a poet in opposition to the materialist, Marxist posi-
tion that our consciousness is a reflection of reality, Berggol'ts argued that
a poet’s self-expression was a concrete example of the reflection of reality
mediated by our consciousness. The speech formed one part of a campaign
to bring lyric poetry back into the Soviet canon, which Berggol'ts began
to wage in 1953.11
Some of the most specific suggestions as to how poetry might catch
up with other literary genres were made by members from the floor who
spoke after the main speeches. Gleb Pagirev (1914–1986) suggested that

f. 371; op. 1; dd. 194–5.
10 Loc. cit.
11 Berggol'ts’s articles are discussed together with the famous articles on prose by
Pomerantsev and Ehrenburg in Walter Vickery, The Cult of Optimism: Political and
Ideological Problems of Recent Soviet Literature (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1963), pp. 33–52. See also Katharine Hodgson, Voicing the Soviet Experience:
The Poetry of Ol'ga Berggol'ts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 45–51.
one problem with Soviet poetry was that it was not rich enough for a read-
ership who led emotionally rich lives. Echoing this, the poet Elena Ryvina
(1910–1985) argued that there were no proper feelings in Soviet poetry and,
in particular, no love poetry that people could identify with:
You would think that the time had now passed when writers had their lovers con-
ducting romances in offices, or sitting together on a combine harvester at the end
of the poem, but the vulgar, sanctimonious attitude towards lyric poetry lives on
to this day.
By ridiculing the excesses of the kolkhoz theme in Stalinist Socialist Realism,

she signalled that it was time Soviet poetry took a more traditional, which
is to say more romantic, approach to the subject of love.
Ryvina also suggested that the backwardness of Soviet poetry was
caused by the difficult conditions of publication in the USSR. To illustrate
her point, she related a story about one of the students in the literary club
that she ran. The student wrote a beautiful poem expressing love for his
motherland, but he could not find a publisher for his work. The editors
of the newspaper he approached suggested that he improve the beautiful
description of the river bank in his poem with the detail of a hydro-electric
power station glittering in the sun. Ryvina deplored editors having such
power, which, she said, induced poets to edit their work even before they
had submitted it for publication, fearing it would be found politically
unsatisfactory.
Ryvina’s mention of the position of young writers was one of many at
the conference. Indeed, the strongest call from those petitioning to change
the literary process was for more frequent and representative publication of
young poets’ work. One young poet complained that there were no oppor-
tunities for young poets to publish. Vadim Shefner (1915–2002) voiced his
fear that, if the standard of Soviet poetry did not rise soon, readers would
come to assume that modern, Soviet poetry could never be as good as the
classics. The only way that he could see to change this situation was to
bring young people into poetry more boldly. Do this without patronizing them, and
without getting angry with them at their first failing. Having more respect for young
people means talking to them as adults.
18 Chapter 1
This conclusion, that a new and younger generation of Soviet writers could
inject the necessary energy required into Soviet poetry, became something
of an obsession in the early years of the Thaw.
In 1953 and 1954, in the run-up to the Second All-Union Congress
of Soviet Writers, Ol'ga Berggol'ts published in Literaturnaya gazeta (The
literary gazette) two important articles concerning Socialist Realism in
lyric poetry,12 that have been widely acknowledged as anticipating and
perhaps influencing the move away from Stalin-era poetry that was later
suggested at the Congress.13 As in her speech at the conference on lyric
poetry, Berggol'ts tried tentatively to rehabilitate lyric poetry in the USSR
in these articles. In her modestly entitled ‘Razgovor o lirike’ (‘A conversation
about lyric poetry’) she argued that realistic representations and facts alone
did not constitute poetry, but that these needed to be transformed into
‘poetic facts’ which would force readers to see and understand the world
in new ways. She claimed that Soviet poetry was devoid of ‘humanness’
and human interest, first, because its representations of Soviet people were
external and superficial, and second, because its consistently balanced, ‘non-
conflicting’ emotions inevitably became banal. She promoted lyric poetry
as the very essence of Socialist Realist literature because, she explained,
the absolute identification of the reader with the lyric hero meant that the
reader not only wished to emulate the hero, but actually became him or
her by reading the poem. This property she termed the educational power
(vospitatel'naya sila) of Socialist Realist lyric poetry.14 Taking advantage
of the beginnings of the Thaw, Berggol'ts accused poets of being afraid to
express an individual representation of life:
Our lyric poetry is dragged towards a deathly, mirror-like form of representation,
towards impersonality, by poets – ‘realists out to pasture’ – who are afraid to repre-
sent our life through the medium of their hearts, as a part of themselves, who clearly
12 Ol'ga Berggol'ts, ‘Razgovor o lirike’, Literaturnaya gazeta, 16 April 1953, p. 3; and

‘Protiv likvidatsii liriki’, Literaturnaya gazeta, 28 October 1954, pp. 3–4.
13 For example Harold Swayze, Political Control of Literature in the USSR 1946–59
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), pp. 33–52.
14 Berggol'ts, ‘Protiv likvidatsii liriki’, p. 3.
suffer from fear of themselves, who recoil from the very concepts of the individual,
individuality, self-expression, that is to say from the very things that poetry and
especially lyric poetry cannot do without.15
Berggol'ts’s articles did much during the early years of the Thaw to draw
attention to the subject of poetry and provoke debate about its role in
Socialist Realist literature.
The Second All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers, held in 1954, was the
next important occasion at which lyric poetry was discussed. This was the
first congress since 1934, when Socialist Realism had been established as
the official ‘method’ for Soviet writers. The condition of Soviet poetry was
discussed by speakers whose instructions reflected the highest level of Soviet
literary policy. The two reports regarding poetry were given by Aleksey
Surkov (1899–1983) and Samed Vurgun (1906–1956).16 In his report ‘On
the condition and the tasks of Soviet literature’17 Surkov kept in line with
established Soviet literary policy when he placed the folk tradition of lit-
erature higher in order of merit than innovative, experimental works.18 His
and others’ reports indicate that the attitude of the Soviet literary authori-
ties towards literature at this time was distinctly anti-intellectual.
Both Surkov and Vurgun named themes that Soviet poetry should
address. While Surkov stressed the internationalism and patriotism of
Soviet literature, Vurgun gave a rare, possibly unique official demarcation
of gender roles. He identified themes which should be found in men’s
poetry: the international brotherhood of workers; the fight against colo-
nialists and imperialists; the friendship of nations; the heroic defence of
the fighters of the Socialist Revolution; the unerring constancy and brav-
ery of soldiers (boitsy); the re-establishment of nationalities belonging to
the various regions and republics of the USSR; and, of course, patriotism.
15 Loc. cit.
16 All reports were published in Vtoroi vsesoyuznyi s"ezd sovetskikh pisatelei.
17 Ibid., pp. 10–37.
18 Swayze talks about the ‘Soviet opposition to experimentalism in literature and the
bias in favour of exploiting traditional forms of folk literature and familiar devices
of nineteenth-century realism’. Swayze, Political Control of Literature in the USSR
1946–59 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), p. 17.
20 Chapter 1
These he contrasted with the themes, significantly fewer in number, which

should be addressed in women’s poetry: elevated human feelings such
as love, friendship, faithfulness and motherhood. Giving direct indica-
tions as to how Soviet poetry should develop after the congress, Vurgun
criticised the technical and industrial terminology that many poets used
in their work. He announced that there should be a move away from the
Stalinist poetry of industrial growth and expansion, and a return to more
traditional poetic themes and diction, going as far to announce that ‘the
time has come to begin a serious discussion of the romantic style in our
poetry’.19 These speakers were indicating that there needed to be a volte-face
in Soviet poetry, and this was a policy that liberal writers such as Berggol'ts
eagerly welcomed.
The Investment in Young Writers
While exhortations to transform poetry in the new, post-Stalin era were

being proclaimed at the highest level of the Writers’ Union, archival material
shows that more locally, in Leningrad, discussion centred on more concrete
aims and means, and often on the subject of work with young writers. On
14 May 1953, the Board of the Leningrad Branch of the Writers’ Union
agreed that work with young writers in the city was weak, and the member-
ship of the Committee for Work with Young Writers was expanded in an
effort to improve its effectiveness.20 Four months later, in September 1953,
the Secretariat of the Union was presented with a report which criticised
its existing apparatus for work with young writers.21 Vsevolod Kochetov
(1912–1973; then secretary of the Leningrad Branch of the Writers’ Union
and a neo-Stalinist conservative) asserted that work with young writers
19 Vtoroi vsesoyuznyi s"ezd sovetskikh pisatelei, p. 71.

20 ‘Protokoly zasedanii pravleniya 1953’, TsGALI St Petersburg: f. 371; op. 1; d. 183.
21 ‘Protokoly zasedanii sekretariata 1953’, TsGALI St Petersburg: f. 371; op. 1; d. 186.
did not really exist in Leningrad, while another member of the secretariat,
Georgy Kholopov (1914–1991), explained that the same ‘young’ writers had
been attending the young people’s literary seminar for fifteen to twenty
years, so they could no longer be classed as young. Kholopov suggested
that an upper age limit be imposed on the seminar, because those excluded
on this basis were too old to be receiving help from the Union. Following
the discussion, the Secretariat formulated five resolutions to be put into
practice by the section:
1. Abolish the group for young writers at the Writers’ Union branch,
and instead create groups at Leningradskii al'manakh (Leningrad
almanac) and hopefully at the journal Zvezda (The star). Also
perhaps create a group for dramatists at the Leningrad Komsomol
Theatre.
2. Try to attract young writers who have proved themselves to come
and work within the creative departments of the Writers’ Union,
as this will enable professional writers to exercise individual, crea-
tive leadership over their younger counterparts.
3. Recommend that the Committee for Work with Young Writers
pay special attention to the work of the literary groups in the city,
at factories, in clubs and at institutes of higher education.
4. Examine the state of the long-running seminars and groups of
young writers.
5. Raise the standard of literary consultation for young writers. Give
the job of reviewing young writers’ manuscripts to experienced
writers.
In its investigations into the situation of young writers in the city, the
Writers’ Union also found the sphere of publishing guilty of excluding
young people from the literary process in Leningrad. In 1954, the Board
decided that the poetry published recently in the journal Zvezda was weak.22

22 Chapter 1
The cause of the problem was diagnosed as a lack of input from young
writers:
Undoubtedly, the poetry section is failing insofar as it is not promoting young poets
who are starting out, youthful talent.
In the ‘thick’ journals in the 1950s we find intermittent selections of young

poets’ work which were perhaps published as a result of this and similar
criticisms from the Writers’ Union.23
In January 1955, the matter of young writers was raised again at a Board
meeting of the Union with a review of the measures that had been adopted
in 1953. Chivilikhin presented to the meeting a paper entitled ‘The imple-
mentation of criticisms’, in which he criticised the Committee for Work
with Young Writers again:
G. Semenov and L. Khaustov have spoken about the poor work with young writers.
In connection with this is seems necessary to expand the Committee for Work with
Young Writers. This committee needs to work more closely with the Committee for
Admissions. Perhaps the committee should be granted the right to recommend the
best works of young writers to journals, almanacs, and publishing houses in order
that its members are not restricted to making general comments about the lack of
attention paid to young authors, but can instead contribute their own concrete rec-
ommendations and suggestions? We need to recommend to the section that they
involve more young writers in their work.24
Chivilikhin’s recommendations for improvement in the work of the sec-

tion were far-reaching, and demonstrate that the Writers’ Union took the
question of work with young writers in the city seriously at this point. At
the same meeting, a new Committee for Work with Young Writers was
appointed which, comprising nineteen writers, was much bigger than its
predecessors.
In the same year, the publishing house Sovetskii pisatel' (Soviet writer)
raised concerns about work with young poets in the city. At a Writers’
23 See in particular the sections entitled ‘Molodye golosa’ (‘Young voices’) that appear
regularly in the Leningrad journal Neva.
Union Board meeting on 25 March 1955, the chief editor Evgeny Naumov
(1909–1971) spoke about his experience of publishing young writers. He
described how the staff at Sovetskii pisatel' felt there were not enough good
young poets in the city: when the editors had been collecting and compil-
ing the almanac Molodoi Leningrad (Young Leningrad) they had found the
material submitted to be shallow and unimpressive.25 He asked the poetry
section of the Writers’ Union to work more closely with young poets; for its
part, he reported, Sovetskii pisatel' had been running a LITO (literaturnoe
ob"edinenie)26 for the past year. The LITO had been set up in response to
criticisms from Moscow that the publishers were not doing enough work
with young poets, and had successfully attracted talented writers whom
the editors had not previously known. It is significant that the forum of
the LITO was supported by a conservative such as Naumov, who saw it as
a forum for guiding young poets in the ‘right’ direction, and that, at the
same time, it was popular with young people, who were less conscious of
its role as an instrument of political guidance than as a forum in which to
meet other poets and discuss literature. During the Thaw, LITOs became
crucial meeting points for young poets and the establishment, and func-
tioned very well as bridges between the generations.
A report from November 1955 gives an idea of how far work with
young writers had developed in response to the various initiatives of the
early Thaw: Gleb Semenov (1918–1982) presented a report to the Board of
the Union that described the progress of the Section for Work with Young
Writers, and its shortcomings, which had yet to be addressed.27 According to
him, 1955 had been an excellent year for young writers: there had been many
books, collections, and manuscripts produced, and successful inclusions

26 LITOs were literary clubs run by members of the Writers’ Union for young writers
in the city. They have their roots in the proletkul't workshops for writers in the 1920s,
and ran throughout the Stalin period; during the Thaw, the system expanded and the
atmosphere in the clubs grew less restrictive. Perhaps in part due to their association
with the literary culture of the 1920s, LITOs became popular with young people
and took a significant role in the promotion of poetry in the 1950s.
24 Chapter 1
of work in the central press. He also spoke about the success of various
LITOs in the city, mentioning a group for prose writers at Sovetskii pisatel',
a group at the journal Neva (The Neva), a group for children’s literature
at the House of Children’s Books, and a military LITO at the House of
Officers. Having lavished praise on these grass-roots activities, Semenov
then criticised the central literary bodies for their lack of enthusiasm and
support for young writers. The Committee for Work with Young Writers
had been disappointing because so few members turned up to the meetings
they were supposed to attend (between five and eight members usually
attending out of a committee that had now expanded to thirty members);
this meant that the jobs that needed doing were being neglected. Semenov
went on to complain that, while there was a great deal of discussion about
how to work better with young writers, in actual fact very little was being
done. At the end of the meeting, Chivilikhin drew up another list of points
for action with regard to work with young writers:
1. To consider work with young writers to be a direct obligation of

all the creative sections of the Union.
2. To direct the attention of the Dramatists’ Section to the weakness
of their work with young writers. To recommend to the section
that it establish a LITO for young dramatists in the near future.
Also to draw the attention of the Critics’ Section to the necessity
of reviewing the work of young writers.
3. To recommend to the editorship of the journal Neva that they
normalise the functioning of their LITO by providing it with a
permanent and experienced leader.
4. To recommend to the Leningrad Branch of the publishing house
Sovetskii pisatel' that they include young poets in their LITO, and
support them by appointing an experienced leader.
5. To hold a general meeting of young writers on 27 November 1955,
which will be considered one form of educational work with young
writers. To oblige members of the Board to take an active part in
the organisation and running of the meeting.
6. To admit that the Committee for Work with Young Writers needs
to activate its work. To instruct the Secretariat to create a new
authoritative and hard-working committee.
7. To recognise the positive initiative of the publishing house Sovetskii
pisatel' in its publication of the almanac Molodoi Leningrad, and to
consider it desirable that the almanac be produced once a year.
Initiatives which were taken in the early 1950s put in place an apparatus
that allowed young writers to be trained and encouraged by writers in
positions of authority. Whatever else may have contributed to the sharp
increase in the popularity of poetry in the 1950s (and these other factors
will be examined below), there can be little doubt that major roles were
played by the establishment of new institutionalised groups, conferences,
and almanacs, and the accompanying drive to improve work with young
writers.
The Writers’ Union hoped that its work with young writers would raise
the standard of Soviet poetry; essentially, therefore, the policies needed not
only to create a proliferation of LITOs, poetry competitions, and publica-
tions, but also to attract more and better young poets into the institution
of Soviet literature. For the policies to prove successful, it was imperative
that the admissions policy of the Union should lead to the acceptance of
new members. Figures from the Fourth All-Union Congress of Writers
(1968) show that the number of new writers admitted into the Union went
up after Stalin’s death: between 1941 and 1954 the number of new writers
admitted per annum was, on average, 136, but between 1955 and 1958, after
the Khrushchev Thaw had set in, this increased to 289 per annum; from
1959 to 1966 – for which annual figures are available – the number stayed
high, ranging from 202 to a peak of 337 in 1962.28 These figures are for the
whole of the Writers’ Union, and are too general to indicate specifically
how the rate of admissions for Leningrad poets changed over the period.
Minutes of the meetings of the Committee for Admissions and the Board
28 Chetvertyi s"ezd soyuza pisatelei SSSR: Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow: Sovetskii

pisatel', 1968), p. 289.
26 Chapter 1
of the Leningrad Branch of the Writers’ Union from the early 1950s can,
however, give us a picture of how the process for accepting new poets
functioned in Leningrad in the 1950s and early 1960s.29
The number of poets discussed by the Committee for Admissions and
considered for admission by the Board rose sharply in 1956, during which
year there seems to have been a boom in the number of poets applying for
recommendation and acceptance.30 During the Stalin period, members
had had first to pass through a kandidat stage of the admissions proc-
ess, whereby a young poet was given junior status before becoming a
fully-fledged member of the Union; it is noticeable that, during the early
1950s, the Union seems to have dispensed with this stage, with the result
that some poets were becoming members of the Union at a younger age.
Indeed, this seems to have been the intended result: when Vyacheslav
Kuznetsov (b. 1932) was accepted by the Union in 1956, the writers Sergey
Orlov (1921–1977; head of the poetry section in Leningrad) and Il'ya
Avramenko (1907–1973) gave his youth as one reason in favour of his
acceptance. Orlov explained: We need to grow younger with the help of
talented young people.31 Of course, youth was not enough on its own to
merit admission, but it certainly helped in the late 1950s.
The criteria for admission to the Writers’ Union at this point are
revealed to some extent by discussions at meetings of both the Committee
for Admissions and the Board, at which certain criticisms of, and words of
praise for a poet’s work were often repeated. The positive elements com-
monly identified in a young poet’s work were: that a poet has developed
his or her own voice; that the work displays originality (samobytnost' ); that
a poet is working in an unusual genre which is poorly represented within
the Union, e.g. political satire; that a poet is popular with the audience at
29 Minutes of meetings of the Committee for Admissions exist in the archive of the
Leningrad Branch of the Writers’ Union only up to 1959: ‘Protokoly priemnoi komis-
sii’, TsGALI St Petersburg: f. 371; op. 1; d. 374.
30 Appendix 3 gives statistics concerning the admission of writers to the Leningrad
Branch of the Writers’ Union, 1953–75.
31 ‘Protokoly i stenogrammy zasedanii pravleniya 1956’, TsGALI St Petersburg: f. 371;
op. 1; d. 267.
readings; and that a poet’s first book or two have been well received by crit-
ics. Reference is often made to an apparently desirable standard of profes-
sionalism in poetry, which is seen in contrast to illiteracy or semi-literacy
in the poetry of less able candidates.32 Illiteracy (malogramotnost' ) is one
fault that is commonly identified in the work of young poets; members
of the Writers’ Union often suggest that a given poet should be advised
to improve his or her literacy in order to increase his or her chances of
admission. Similarly, a number of applicants were criticised for having too
journalistic a style, too little education or ‘culture’, or for writing a large
amount of low-quality verse. On the other hand, there are instances when
a poet is described as too bookish and criticised for writing too little. In
one instance in 1959, the work of a young poet named Mikhailov was criti-
cised as too ‘nonsensical’ (‘zaumnyi ’) for Soviet literature, pointing to the
poet’s affinity with Futurism. Il'ya Sel'vinsky’s support for the young poet
was dismissed as partisanship because Mikhailov was writing in the older
poet’s style. This attitude illustrates the persistence of the conservatism in
literary policy that had dominated the Stalin era.33
Members of the Board and the Committee for Admissions usually
agreed that a poet whose literacy needed improvement was not a suit-
able candidate for admission to the Union. The applications of literate,
middle-of-the-road poets whose work was neither particularly good nor
appallingly bad, however, were often discussed at length. During these
discussions, members of the Union frequently turned to more general
questions about the policies governing admission to the Union. They tried
to determine, first, whether the Union should seek to raise its standards
by accepting only the very best, or boost its numbers by admitting writers
of average quality who were no better or worse than many existing mem-
bers; and second, whether the quality or the quantity of a writer’s work
should be the factor that decided his or her suitability for the Union. The
32 These observations are taken principally from the minutes of the committee for
admissions; information regarding the criteria for admissions is also found in meet-
ings of the Board of the Leningrad Branch of the Writers’ Union.
33 ‘Protokoly priemnoi komissii’, TsGALI St Petersburg.
28 Chapter 1
applications of three poets, B. Raevsky, Sergey Davydov, and Vyacheslav

Kuznetsov, made in 1956–7, illustrate the attitudes of Union members
towards poets of varying degrees of talent and with varying amounts of
their work published.
When Raevsky made his third application to the Writers’ Union (he
had applied twice in Moscow and been rejected on both occasions), he had
published eleven books, and it is apparent from the disparaging comments
about them that the standard of this work was considered to be not very
high.34 Aleksandr Lebedenko (1892–1975) described the poems as being of
a ‘journalistic character’, with no interest for the reader of today or tomor-
row; he said they could not withstand criticism, and were simply a rhymed
collection of words. It might be expected that, after these and other, simi-
lar comments, the Board would swiftly decide to reject the application;
but various members endeavoured to find positive features in Raevsky’s
work that might warrant his acceptance. Pavel Zhurba (1895–1976) tried
to suggest that he might be an interesting candidate for the children’s lit-
erature section, arguing that at least he produced a lot of work, and that
three books of prose, out of his eleven published books, were quite inter-
esting. Eventually, it was decided that all members of the Committee for
Admissions should read one novella, Tovarishch Bogdan (Comrade Bogdan),
and make a decision based on their appraisal of it.
Later the same year, the poet and veteran of the Great Patriotic
War Sergey Davydov (b. 1928) was recommended by the Committee for
Admissions without reservation, even though he had produced only one
small collection of poems to date.35 Vladimir Orlov (1908–1985; chief
editor of the Library of Poets series 1956–1970) explicitly stated, and other
members agreed, that the committee should be guided in this case not
only by the amount of poems the author had produced, but also by his
talent. His case suggests that in 1956, given the recommendation of a senior
figure, the Committee for Admissions would accept poets they consid-
ered to be talented even with very little work published. A poet who was
34 Loc. cit.
35 Loc. cit.
not considered as talented as Davydov, however, had to have published

more work in order to achieve the same degree of approval. Kuznetsov
was recognised as a poet of only average talent, but the fact that he was
prolific helped his application to the Union.36 Some members of the com-
mittee expressed concern that in this case the amount of work published
was still insufficient to decide the creative future of the poet in question,
but Kuznetsov was nevertheless recommended. There seems to have been
a reluctance to reject poets’ applications outright at this stage, probably
because of instructions from the Party that more young writers should be
accepted to invigorate the ranks of Soviet poets.
It is clear from the discussions of poets’ applications to the Union that
extra-literary, as well as literary considerations exerted an influence on the
Union’s decision to accept or reject a candidate. The behaviour of writers in
the Union was seen to reflect upon the organisation, and so any concerns
over a candidate’s conduct were aired and discussed at the Committee for
Admissions or Board meetings. In 1957, the poet V. Maksimov’s applica-
tion to join the Union was unsuccessful because he had a reputation for
antisocial behaviour. Lebedenko reasoned that:
In this case, taking into account the personal character and behaviour of the poet,
under no circumstance can we consider accepting him into the Union. Unfortunately
there are already comrades in the Union whom one tries to avoid in the corridor or
the restaurant, and we must not increase their numbers.37
Yankovsky, another member of the Committee for Admissions, identi-

fied Maksimov as one of several ‘young geniuses’ who drank vodka in
bucketfuls, behaved scandalously, and felt that membership of the Writers’
Union would guarantee them impunity. Such behaviour was universally
condemned at the meeting, and Maksimov was not recommended for
admittance to the Union.
A year earlier, in 1956, a more sensitive issue connected with a poet’s
behaviour arose in the course of an application. A writer who already held
36 Loc. cit.
37 Loc. cit.
30 Chapter 1
the status of kandidat applied to become a full member, but his application
was not recommended by the Committee for Admissions on the grounds
that he had behaved badly in the past towards a fellow writer. It transpires
from the discussion at the Board meeting that during the Stalin era the
candidate in question, Merzon, had denounced a writer who had now
been rehabilitated, and the Committee for Admissions had considered
this sufficient reason to refuse his application. The Secretariat overruled
the decision, however, and Merzon’s case came up for discussion at a Board
meeting.38 The chairman of the Union, Aleksandr Prokof 'ev (1900–1971),
justified the Secretariat’s decision to support Merzon, saying:
The Committee for Admissions is wrong to turn away an active writer on account of
some kind of mistake he made with regards to this comrade. This could be true of a
whole host of people, when you consider rehabilitation today … How many comrades
failed to control themselves for various reasons during those difficult times?
This comment caused consternation among members of the Board, how-

ever, and Prokof 'ev later apologised for the generalisation that he had
made. The ensuing discussion tried to establish the qualities that were to
be expected from a member of the Writers’ Union, and to assess whether
or not Merzon could be accepted; eventually, one member defined the
qualities desirable in a writer in very idealistic terms:
any comrade we accept needs to be morally sound, a writer should be a morally
pure person.
This is a typical retreat into abstract ideas and generalisations that pays
lip service to ideals bearing no relation to reality. Merzon was eventually
judged to have meant no ill to the writer concerned when he made an
accidentally incriminating statement, so his application to the Union was
38 ‘Stenogrammy zasedanii pravleniya 1956’, TsGALI St Petersburg: f. 371; op. 1;

d. 267.
accepted and the question of an individual’s responsibility for the crimes

of the Stalin period was evaded.39
The criteria that I have suggested were employed by the Writers’ Union,
such as formal aspects of verse, themes, volume of work, talent, and behav-
iour of the writer, include only those which were openly acknowledged by
the members of the Committee for Admissions, the Secretariat, and the
Board. It is very likely that certain prejudices played their part in the process
of admissions to the Union too, and that personal contacts and relationships
also influenced the process. Anti-Semitism, for example, seems to have influ-
enced the admissions policy although it was not openly acknowledged.40
It is important to take these considerations into account when looking at
the attempts young poets made to join the Union in the 1950s and 1960s,
and the reasons why some were and others were not successful.
The Student Poetry Movement
The policies of the Writers’ Union in the 1950s aimed to encourage young
people to turn to poetry and facilitate their development as poets, but
young people came to poetry at this time for a variety of reasons that can
be explained only partly by official policy; other circumstances, too, con-
tributed to poetry’s popularity and importance during the Thaw. The young
poets in Leningrad at this time belonged to the post-war and, after 1953,
post-Stalin generation, which was dislocated from its immediate past by the
collapse of Stalinism that began in 1953, and by the enormous losses of their
parents’ generation in the purges of the 1930s and the Great Patriotic War;
39 There is no trace of Merzon as a writer, however; he is not listed in the encyclopaedia

of Leningrad Writers Pisateli Leningrada: Bibliograficheskii spravochnik 1934–81, ed.
V. Bakhtin and A. Lur'e (Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1982).
40 See, for example, Lev Druskin, Spasennaya kniga (London: Overseas Publications
Interchange, 1984) for an account of anti-Semitism in the Writers’ Union.
32 Chapter 1
for Leningraders, the siege of Leningrad had meant especially severe loss of
life during the war. The great interest in poetry which blossomed in the late
1950s seems to have been a symptom of this ‘orphaned’ generation’s search
for a sense of cultural continuity.41 This search led many young people back
to the 1910s and 1920s, and to the Symbolist, Acmeist and Futurist poetry
which embodied Russian culture of that time. For this reason, the surviving
members of the intelligentsia of the 1920s, which included many teachers at
the higher education institutes in Leningrad,42 the figures of Pasternak and
Akhmatova, and, later in the 1960s, surviving members of the OBERIU
and Futurists, became important influences for many young poets.43
Stalin’s death in March 1953 is the most important of all the events
which precipitated and facilitated the Thaw under Khrushchev. Although
Khrushchev’s ‘secret speech’ in 1956 is considered to be the beginning of the
Thaw, it is clear that the atmosphere in the USSR relaxed politically to a
considerable degree between 1953 and 1956: major signs of the beginning of
the Thaw included the amnesties for political prisoners of the GULag, and
several famous official publications: Ehrenburg’s ‘O rabote pisatelya’ (‘The
writer’s work’)44 and Pomerantsev’s ‘Ob iskrennosti v literature’ (‘Sincerity
in literature’),45 both in 1953, and of Ehrenburg’s novel Ottepel ' (The thaw)
in 1954.46 There were many other cultural developments as well which are
41 A search which Brodsky referred to in his Nobel Lecture: Joseph Brodsky, ‘Nobel
Lecture’, p. 55.
42 Elena Kumpan lists senior figures who helped the Thaw generation of poets. In her
order they are: Lidiya Ginzburg, El'ga Linetskaya, Tamara Khmel'nitskaya, Dmitry
Maksimov, Boris Bukhshtab, N. Berkovsky, Tamara Sil'man, Vladimir Admoni,
David Dar, V. Manuilov, V. Glinka, Gleb Semenov, Eleazar Meletinsky, Efim Etkind,
Boris Kostelyanets, Paul Karp, and B. Kostsinsky. See her ‘Nashi Stariki’, in B. Ivanov,
ed., Istoriya leningradskoi nepodtsenzurnoi literatury (St Petersburg: Dean, 2000),
pp. 29–38 (p. 34). Hereafter references to this volume are given as ILNL.
43 Svetlana Boym identifies a tendency in Soviet culture of the 1950s and 1960s to
return to the ideals and aesthetics of the 1920s in her Common Places (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 29–120.
44 I. Ehrenburg, ‘O rabote pisatelya’, Znamya 10 (1953), 160–83.
45 V. Pomerantsev, ‘Ob iskrennosti v literature’, Novyi mir 12 (1953), 218–45.
46 I. Erenburg, ‘Ottepel'’, Znamya 5 (1954), 14–87.
not so well known, and have not been so well documented. These devel-
opments occurring at a grass-roots level suggest that some people, and in
particular the younger generation, were acutely sensitive to the political
changes happening in the country and were quick to respond to them.
Even before Stalin’s death, there were some ‘precursors’ to the poetry
movement in the characters and events of the last years of Stalinism. When,
later in the 1960s and 1970s, unofficial writers became more self-conscious
of themselves as a movement, these precursors became part of their history
that they traced and documented. The first group of young people who can
be seen as part of the poetry movement appeared in the very early 1950s.47
The group’s members were born between 1929 and 1933, and included
the poet Roal'd Mandel'shtam and the graphic artists Aleksandr Aref 'ev,
Vadim Prelovsky, and Rodion Gudzenko.48 Although most of the young
men in this group were graphic artists, Mandel'shtam’s involvement with
them makes it relevant to a study of the poetry movement. Mandel'shtam
died in 1961, but his poetry was preserved and later read by younger Thaw
poets; his friendship with artists and his poetry, which was not written to
comply with Socialist Realism, had a discernible influence on the move-
ment which followed on from his time. This ‘group’ was apparently the
prototype of the many unofficial groups which existed alongside the offi-
cially run poetry groups of the Thaw.
Roal'd Mandel'shtam’s poetry was never published during his lifetime,
but it survived in manuscript form in the hands of his friends. It was later
reproduced in samizdat, which made it accessible to a wider readership
than had previously been possible. From the history of his poetry it is at
once apparent that a distinction exists between a manuscript or typescript,
and a samizdat manuscript or typescript, and it is necessary to establish
exactly what the difference is, and where the boundary between the two
lies. For the purposes of this study, the term samizdat, which has come
47 Appendix 2 gives a table of the unofficial groups in Leningrad and their membership
for the period.
48 Boris Roginsky, ‘Roal'd Mandel'shtam (1932–1961)’, in ILNL, pp. 39–48; Betaki,
Russkaya poeziya za 30 let, p. 118. On the artists of this group see: Lyubov' Gurevich,
Aref 'evskii krug (St Petersburg: Avangard na Neve, 2002).
34 Chapter 1
to carry various meanings, will be used to refer to texts which were pro-
duced, by hand or typed, as alternatives to officially endorsed, censored
Soviet literature, and which were intended for distribution or circulation
among readers.49
Another precursor to the poetry movement in Leningrad was a ‘proto-
Futurist’ group of friends in the Philological Faculty of Leningrad State
University.50 In 1952 several students in the faculty discovered a shared
interest in the Futurist poets of the 1920s. Lev Loseff, who later became
friends with them, describes how two factions of the group produced
their own almanacs: Brynza (Sheep cheese), and S"edim brynzu (We’ll eat
the sheep cheese). They were probably the first of the student journals and
broadsheets that became quite numerous later in the 1950s. These inde-
pendent publications were produced as alternatives to institutes’ and facul-
ties’ own cyclostyled (mnogotirazhnyi) magazines or broadsheets, which
were subject to censorship by the university’s politically conscientious
authorities. Loseff describes a now legendary event on 1 December 1952,
when some of these proto-Futurists apparently held a demonstration in
the Philological Faculty of the State University by enacting a ‘pan-Slavic,
Khlebnikovian Utopia’. E. Kondratov, Sokol'nikov, Mikhail Krasil'nikov
(1933–1996) and Yury Mikhailov (1933–1990) came into university wear-
ing traditional Russian boots and shirts open to the waist, sat on the floor
in the faculty, and ate tyurya (a pulp made from bread and kvass) from
a single bowl with wooden spoons, while singing Khlebnikov’s poems.
49 For a description of the development of samizdat in the USSR see: Lyudmila

Alekseeva, ‘Istoriya inakomysliya v SSSR’, in A. I. Strelyany et al., eds, Samizdat
veka (Minsk: Polifakt, 1997), pp. 19–45.
50 For an account of this group see Lev Loseff, ‘Tulupy my’, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 14
(1995), 209–15. Previously published in Konstantin Kuz'minsky and Grigory Kovalev,
eds, The Blue Lagoon Anthology of Modern Russian Poetry, 5 vols (Newtonville, MA:
Oriental Research Partners, 1986), vol. 1, pp. 141–9. Irene Kolchinsky also describes
this group and their activities, giving some examples of their poetry, in The Revival
of the Russian Literary Avant-Garde: The Thaw Generation and Beyond (Munich:
Verlag Otto Sagner, 2001), pp. 80–9.
Krasil'nikov and Mikhailov were thrown out of the university as a result

and readmitted only after Stalin had died.
It was in 1953, soon after Stalin died, that the institutional structure
of the poetry movement began to be established. Most of the new genera-
tion of young poets who appeared in Leningrad in the 1950s were students
and, to a large extent, the movement grew out of the local institutes of
higher education, where young people met each other, and attended the
poetry groups organised for students.51 Probably the single most important
organiser of these groups and supporter of young writers in Leningrad at
this time was Gleb Semenov, who, through his work with young writ-
ers, became an enormously influential figure of authority for many young
poets in Leningrad during the 1950s, 1960s and into the 1970s.52 In 1954,
Semenov took charge of the work that the Leningrad Branch of the Writers’
Union undertook with young people.53 He was not a Party member, and
his promotion to this position is an example of the way in which the politi-
cal Thaw played a crucial role in facilitating the poetry movement, since
in less liberal times, a non-party member would not have been given such
an authoritative position.54 During the Thaw, his persistent support for
work with young writers helped establish the system of LITOs and con-
51 Appendix 1 gives a table of the officially organised poetry groups in Leningrad and
their membership.
52 This is attested by many of Semenov’s former students in memoirs and interviews,
for example, Britanishsky, ‘Studencheskoe poeticheskoe dvizhenie’, p. 180. Also in:
Lev Mochalov, ‘Gleb-gvardii semenovskogo polka …’, unpublished article dated 20
March 1999.
53 Kumpan, ‘Nashi stariki’, p. 30.
54 Vladimir Britanishsky, ‘Studencheskoe poeticheskoe dvizhenie v Leningrade v nach-
ale ottepeli’, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 14 (1995), 167–80 (p. 170). The Garrards
explain that, because the Writers’ Union was not officially a Party organisation,
writers did not have to be Party members. Over the years 1967–86 the percentage
of writers who held Party membership grew from 54.7 per cent to 58.9 per cent, so
it seems likely that it may have been lower at the beginning of the Thaw – there are
no figures available for this period. John and Carol Garrard, Inside the Soviet Writers’
Union (London, New York: I. B. Tauris, 1990), pp. 3 and 241.
36 Chapter 1
ferences, and the opportunities for publishing that aided young poets in
their early careers.
In 1953 Semenov began running the LITO at the Leningrad Mining
Institute, which became the most important such group in the late 1950s.
The original members included Aleksandr Gorodnitsky (b. 1933), who
went on to become one of the most famous Leningrad bards, Vladimir
Britanishsky (b. 1933), who went on to work as a geologist and publish
poetry, Leonid Ageev (1935–1991), who became a professional poet but
suffered from alcoholism, Oleg Tarutin (b. 1935), who went on to work as
a geologist and publish poetry, and Lidiya Gladkaya (b. 1934), who mar-
ried the poet Gleb Gorbovsky (b. 1931) and worked at the literary journal
Avrora (Aurora). A great number of LITOs were established in the technical
institutes of Leningrad during this period, and Britanishsky suggests this
was because there was less political pressure on students in these kinds of
institutions than in some others. Although they were often more interested
in the humanities subjects, students wanting to avoid political dogma went,
deliberately or faute de mieux, to study at these technical institutes: hence
the success of their LITOs.55 The Mining Institute was a special case in
this respect, however, for geology became very fashionable at the begin-
ning of the 1950s, associated with the romance of the great outdoors and
exploration in the imagination of many young people;56 there was fierce
competition to get into the Mining Institute during the Thaw years.57
With so many idealistic students at the Institute, it is not surprising that
its LITO became so popular and successful. As well as the Mining Institute
55 Ludmila Stern recalls how her father encouraged her: ‘I beg you, go into geology
… You won’t have to tell as many lies. Granite is made of quartz, feldspar and mica
under all regimes.’ Ludmila Stern, Osya, Iosif, Joseph (Moscow: Nezavisimaya gazeta,
2001), p. 30 (my translation).
56 G. S. Smith highlights the importance of pioneering and the romance of the out-
doors for guitar poetry in the same period. Smith, Songs to Seven Strings. Russian
Guitar Poetry and Soviet ‘Mass Song’ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984),
p. 42.
57 Aleksandr Genis, Petr Vail', 60-e – Mir sovetskogo cheloveka (Ann Arbor: Ardis,
1988); Lidiya Fedorovna Kapralova, interview with the author, tape recording, St
Petersburg, 9 November 2002.
LITO, Semenov ran the LITO at the Polytechnic Institute in the 1950s;
after that LITO was closed, he headed the group at the House of Culture
of the First Five-Year Plan and, at the end of the 1960s, the Central LITO
of the Writers’ Union.
In 1954, the same year that Semenov took charge of work with young
writers in Leningrad, another figure who was important and influential
for young poets, El'ga Linetskaya (1909–1997), began running her transla-
tion seminars.58 Linetskaya had been arrested in 1933 for her involvement
in what in other circumstances would have been an innocuous reading
group, which set out to study Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Although she
did not serve a long sentence in a GULag, her husband did, and after her
release she continued to live near the camp he was held in; only in 1946
were they able to return to Leningrad and start to take part in literary life
once more. Linetskaya was one of several members of the older generation
who taught young writers in Leningrad literary circles not only the skills
of writing or translating, but also the culture of early-twentieth-century
Russia. Another such figure was Dmitry Maksimov (1906–1987), who also
in 1954 began his Blok seminars that in years to come became famous among
students in the Philological Faculty of the State University.59 Maksimov
wrote poetry himself, but was not published in the USSR, and only one
small volume of his work came out, under a pseudonym, in Lausanne in
1982.60 Kumpan describes how his seminars, together with groups such
as Tat'yana Gnedich’s translation workshop which began in 1957, and the
many LITOs in the city, provided an environment of creativity without
intimidation for young poets and writers; this kind of environment had
not and could not have existed under Stalin’s regime.61
It seems to have been in 1954 that LITOs began to appear all over
Leningrad.62 The student poetry movement became a phenomenon
58 El'ga L'vovna Linetskaya. Materialy k biografii iz literaturnogo naslediya, comp. by

Mikhail Yasnov (St Petersburg: Symposium, 1999).
59 Kumpan, ‘Nashi stariki’, pp. 30–33.
60 Ignaty Karamov [Dmitry Maksimov], Stikhi (Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme, 1982).
61 Kumpan, ‘Nashi stariki’, pp. 29–30.
62 Britanishsky, ‘Studencheskoe poeticheskoe dvizhenie’, p. 167.
38 Chapter 1
throughout the city, and groups sprouted like mushrooms in institutes.

LITOs were connected to the Writers’ Union because they were run by
Union members, but the degree of orthodoxy observed in the running of
the groups was, apparently, entirely dependent on these individual lead-
ers.63 Groups with sympathetic leaders became very popular; the Mining
Institute LITO, for example, was selective about its membership, and in
1956 accepted three promising young poets from outside the Institute who
went on to become well known poets: Aleksandr Kushner, Nina Koroleva
(b. 1933), and Gleb Gorbovsky.64 Other LITOs were clearly less serious and
the poetry they produced remained at a very amateur level.
There are several accounts of LITOs in Leningrad during the Thaw.
Yakov Gordin (b. 1935) has described how one long-established group at
the Philological Faculty of Leningrad University functioned in the 1950s.65
At a meeting of the LITO one person would read some of his or her poems,
and an opponent (in the sense of an official opponent at the defence of an
academic dissertation) would give an appraisal of the poems, after which
the general discussion would begin. Gordin remembers that, although the
LITO was quite tightly controlled by its leader Naumov, until the mid-
1950s poets enjoyed a certain degree of freedom in the group. The poets
Il'ya Fonyakov (b. 1935) and Maya Borisova (b. 1932), both of whom went
on to join the Union, attended this LITO during this period. By 1960,
according to Gordin, less freedom of expression was tolerated by the lead-
ership, and consequently the LITO was no longer highly rated by more
independent-minded young poets.
Another popular LITO of the mid-1950s, which produced several
well-known poets, met at the Industrial Co-operative House of Culture
63 Massie, The Living Mirror, p. 28.

64 Nina Koroleva, ‘Anna Akhmatova i leningradskaya poeziya 1960-kh godov’, in Svoyu
mezh vas eshche ostaviv ten' … ed. by N. V. Koroleva and S. A. Kovalenko, Akhmatovskie
chteniya. Vypusk 3 (Moscow: Nasledie, 1992), pp. 117–32 (pp. 117–18).
65 Yakov Gordin, ‘LITO: Kartina byla pestraya’, Pchela 11 (1997) [page numbers not
known], also at: <http://www.pchela.ru/podshiv/11/lito.htm>.
or ‘PROMKO’ in Leningrad.66 David Shraer-Petrov (b. 1936) describes

how he and his friend Il'ya Averbakh (b. 1934; later a famous film direc-
tor in Moscow) attended this LITO together with Evgeny Rein, Dmitry
Bobyshev, and Anatoly Naiman (b. 1936) – three poets from the Lensoviet
Technical Institute who were already well-known and respected in stu-
dent circles, referred to as ‘The Poets’ by other young people in the city.67
Other poets who attended the PROMKO LITO from time to time, if
not regularly, included: Ageev, Kushner, Leonid Vinogradov (b. 1936),
and Mikhail Eremin (b. 1937). Shraer-Petrov describes the LITO as an
explosive combination of ‘formalists’ and more traditional poets. It had
a succession of leaders from the Writers’ Union over the few years that
it ran, each of whom found it impossible to control the group of young
poets ideologically. By 1960, poets were drifting away from the LITO, and
it eventually burned out.
The liberal writer David Dar (1910–1980) ran a LITO called ‘Golos
yunosti’ (The Voice of Youth) in the 1950s and 1960s, which was attended
by Gorbovsky, Sosnora, and later Oleg Okhapkin (1944–2008) among
others. Dar was very encouraging to young poets, and remained a supporter
of non-conformist and unofficial poetry into the 1970s.68 Viktor Krivulin
describes him as a great listener, remarkable for his continuing interest in
modern and innovative poetry even as he grew older, and an enthusiastic
LITO leader who gave great encouragement to young poets.69
The affiliation of all LITOs to the Writers’ Union meant that LITO
poets had access to official channels for reading their poetry that was denied
to members of unofficial groups. In 1957, for example, the Mining Institute
66 David Shraer-Petrov’s ‘novel of memoirs’ describes the members and activities of this
LITO from 1956 to 1959: David Shraer-Petrov, Druz'ya i teni (New York: Liberty
Publishing House, 1989).
67 Koroleva, ‘Anna Akhmatova i leningradskaya poeziya 1960-kh godov’, p. 118; see also
Britanishsky, ‘Studencheskoe poeticheskoe dvizhenie’, pp. 167–8.
68 Although a member of the Writers’ Union, David Dar wrote the introduction to
Kuz'minsky’s samizdat anthology Zhivoe zerkalo.
69 Aleksandr Kalomirov [Viktor Krivulin], ‘Dvadtsat' let noveishei russkoi poezii:
predvaritel'nye zametki’, Russkaya mysl', 27 December 1985.
40 Chapter 1
organised a public evening of poetry entitled ‘Pervaya vstrecha’ (‘First

meeting’). This was the first public occasion at which Sosnora, Gorbovsky,
Kushner, and Uflyand read their poetry.70 These kinds of official, public
readings for young poets who were not members of the Writers’ Union
were held in Leningrad well into the 1960s; taking part in such readings
was the principal way in which poets could try to make a name for them-
selves. Suzanne Massie says that:
After Khrushchev’s thaw, in 1959, public readings sponsored by various organisations
became more frequent. Many poets who were not yet printed were invited along
with official poets to come and read their poetry and translations of foreign works.
These readings helped them become known, and to make contacts with people in
the literary world.71
Aleksandr Kushner has described how poetry readings became

extremely popular during the Thaw and were an important way that young
poets could make a name for themselves in a literary world where publishing
was fraught with Soviet censorship and bureaucracy.72 It was very difficult
to get anything published; even LITO leaders and members of the Writers’
Union’s Committee for Work with Young Writers had little influence over
editors, but Kushner explains that those who enjoyed popularity at public
readings had a stronger case for getting their work into print. Once a poet
had publications, he or she was the on the way towards achieving recog-
nition as an official poet, and membership of the Writers’ Union, or the
Litfond or gruppkom, which were not as prestigious as the Union but, in
practical terms, vital professional organisations.
Some poetry readings were organised on a large-scale and became
notable events. From 1954–7 an annual reading was held at the Polytechnic
Institute which was highly valued by young poets. In its second year it was
held in November 1955, and afterwards several members of prominent
LITOs published poems in Politekhnik, the magazine of the Polytechnic

71 Ibid., p. 29.
72 Aleksandr Kushner, interview with the author, tape recording, St Petersburg, 7
November 2002.
Institute.73 These poets included: Viktor Berlin, regarded as the star of

the Polytechnic Institute LITO;74 Aleksandr Kushner, then a student at
the Herzen Pedagogical Institute and member of the PROMKO LITO;
Gorodnitsky and Britanishsky from the Mining Institute LITO; and
Fonyakov from Leningrad State University.75 With the possible excep-
tion of Viktor Berlin, all these poets managed to join the Writers’ Union
during the Thaw; this publication, then, seems to have been a step on the
ladder that led to a literary career.
It was also true, however, that some LITOs had closer ties to official
literature than others. In 1955 Gleb Gorbovsky left Dar’s LITO to join
the group at the Mining Institute because, he says, he found that poets
at Dar’s group had become preoccupied more with themselves than with
poetry.76 Gorbovsky was probably keen to join the Mining Institute LITO
because of its proximity to official literature and its aura of activity and
industriousness: at the time, Semenov’s group was widely considered to
be the most energetic and creative of the groups.77 It produced its own
collection of poetry in 1955, and reproduced it in mimeographed form at
the Institutskii Profkom (the equivalent of a small trade union branch in
the USSR, attached to an institution). The collection is probably the most
official, and large-scale, of all the student publications of the period, with
300 copies produced and sent to institutes of higher education all over the
USSR.78 The LITO members’ poems were also published in the Moscow
73 For a detailed account of this evening see Bobyshev, Ya zdes', pp. 122–6.
74 Viktor Berlin remained a little known poet, though an article devoted to his work
appeared in 2006: Elena Ioffe, ‘O poemakh Viktora Berlina’, Neva 10 (2006), accessed
at <http://magazines.russ.ru/neva /2006/10/io21.html>, 18 August 2009.
76 Gleb Gorbovsky, Ostyvshie sledy. Zapiski literatora (Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1991),
pp. 221–34.
77 Britanishsky, ‘Studencheskoe poeticheskoe dvizhenie’, pp. 170–1; Massie says member-
ship of the Mining Institute LITO was tantamount to being published, The Living
Mirror, p. 28; Bobyshev recalls that the Mining Institute LITO was well known as
the best in Leningrad, but that to attend or join it you would have to try to publish
something: Bobyshev, Ya zdes', p. 98.
42 Chapter 1
‘thick’ journal, Molodaya gvardiya (The young guard), in 1956.79 This pres-
tigious publication is a good example of the kinds of opportunities that
this LITO provided for its members.
The poems published in Molodaya gvardiya give us a good idea of the
kind of poetry that this LITO and perhaps others were producing. The
selection of poems is typical of what came to be known as the ‘young litera-
ture’ (molodaya literatura) of the Thaw: it does not contravene the norms of
Socialist Realist poetry, but is nonetheless characterised by a spirit of youth
and ‘searching’ which were keynotes of the Thaw period. The selection is
entitled ‘V puti’ (‘On their way’) and introduced by Gleb Semenov. In his
introduction, the LITO’s leader talks about the ‘search’ (poisk) in poetry
that so embodies the spirit of the Thaw. He describes the young poets’
profession of geology, and the relationship that it bears to poetry:
Genuine poetry is unthinkable without intensive searching, without laborious pros-

pecting, without the reconstruction of what is whole and integral from the smallest
individual signs. The speciality of the geologist and the poet! Two professions, but
one calling: to search and discover in the name of people’s happiness.
Half of the twelve poems concern geology, and mostly the experience of
geologists on expeditions. In the other half of the poems, figures other than
geologists that are described include a hard-working mother, a worker, a
trumpeter, settlers of the virgin lands, and Beethoven. The themes that the
poems address are confined to those of exploration and discovery, inspira-
tion, love, and the love of one’s work; all are presented in very optimistic
terms, and imbued with the freshness of youth.
The formal aspects of the poems are similarly acceptable in Socialist
Realist terms, since they were published in a Moscow ‘thick’ journal. All
the poems have an alternating rhyme scheme, although not all are organ-
ised into four-line stanzas, the cardinal verse form for Soviet poetry; the
rhymes are almost always exact and often grammatical. The language of the
poems is noticeably standardised, with no high-style, literary vocabulary
used at all; instead, both the vocabulary and syntax closely imitate the
79 Gleb Semenov, ‘V puti’, Molodaya Gvardiya 3 (1956), 3–11.

spoken, sometimes demotic language, as in the first stanza of Britanishsky’s

poem ‘Dozhdik’:
Дождик был совсем, как паутина:

Прилипал неслышно к волосам,
По пути береза приютила –
На ветвях и листьях повисал.
The rain was so light, like a cobweb:/ noiselessly it stuck to your hair,/ along the way
a birch tree gave some shelter,–/ it hung down from the branches and the leaves.
This group was probably the closest to official literature of all the LITOs
not only in terms of its opportunities to publish, but also of the poetry it
produced. It was in its heyday in 1955–7, but at the height of its powers
even this well-established and respectable group did not prove immune
to political whimsy: changes in political climate and the politics of local
Party organs often had an impact on young writers.
In 1956 the political climate in the USSR experienced dramatic shifts,
which had ramifications for the student poetry movement in Leningrad.
On 25 February, Khrushchev’s ‘secret speech’, which exposed the errors of
the cult of the individual under Stalin, accelerated the political Thaw which
had begun with Stalin’s death. The Conference of Young Writers held in
Leningrad shortly afterwards reflected this thaw, and it seemed for a while
that there would be scope to publish poetry written individually and with
integrity. In November, however, the Soviet invasion of Hungary struck a
blow to the liberalising trend, and served as a caution that there were defi-
nite limits to the extent of the Thaw. In Leningrad, this reactionary event
was mirrored by curbs upon the freedom of young writers.
The Fifth Conference of Young Writers of the North-Western USSR
was held in April 1956, very soon after the secret speech. Such conferences
were usually held biennially in Leningrad and were, for an aspiring writer,
a way to get both work and name known to professional writers in the city.
Writers taking part were assessed by the organisers, who had the author-
ity to recommend a young person’s work for publication on the strength
of his or her performance. Recommendations were not binding for any
44 Chapter 1
publishing house or journal, however, since editors were, strictly speaking,

independent of the Writers’ Union and its policies, but in more liberal
times they often followed the Union’s advice. On the first day of the 1956
conference, a paper was given by the critic A. L. Dymshits (1910–1975; a
Jew who occupied a position in official literature even at the height of the
anti-cosmopolitan campaign of the 1940s and an ideological conformist)
entitled ‘The tasks of literature in the light of the resolutions of the XX
Party Congress’, which emphasised how important Khrushchev’s speech
had been for literature.80
In his address to the conference, Dymshits indicated that the var-
nishing of reality (lakirovka) in literature should be avoided, and the cult
of personality dispensed with. The speech trumpeted the new Party line
of de-Stalinization. Dymshits not only identified the mistakes that were
made during the period of the cult: he also struck at the root of Stalinist
Socialist Realism as a methodology. He spoke about the ‘liquidation of the
style that has had such a pernicious effect on literature, of the style that is
alien to realism and the people, of the style of cold Party spirit, of pomp-
ous monumentalism.’ He also gave specific recommendations about the
direction that literature should take in the future, drawing the attention
of the conference to some instructions given in the opening speech at the
recent All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers:
I think that in the Central Committee’s opening address to the Second Congress
of Writers, one particular point was very well made – the call for a variety of forms,
genres, methods in our work, a call not to curb the creative individuality of the writer
… We need to take account of the experience of progressive foreign writers, of the
greatest masters of foreign literature. The Party document points towards this – the
Address of the Central Committee to the Second Congress of Writers. We need to
get to know better the progressive literature of foreign countries.
He mentioned Bertolt Brecht, Ernest Hemingway (specifically The Old

Man and the Sea), and many talented French poets as the kinds of new
influences which would help the development of Soviet literature. He stated
80 ‘Pyataya oblastnaya konferentsiya molodykh pisatelei’, TsGALI St Petersburg: f. 371;

op. 1; d. 298.
that, in addition to foreign writers, the time had come to re-evaluate Russian
literary heritage as well; writers like Fedor Dostoevsky, Il'f and Petrov, and
Velemir Khlebnikov were to be restored to the canon.
At the final assembly of the conference, representatives from the
Union’s various sections (poetry, prose, criticism, and so on) gave a résumé
of the seminars they had run.81 Elena Ryvina’s account of the poetry semi-
nar she ran with Margarita Aliger (1915–1992), Tamara Khmel'nitskaya
(1906–1997) and Lev Mochalov (b. 1928) may well refer to the first moment
that the talent of several young poets was officially recognised. She spoke at
length and in detail about four poets whom she understood to be united by
the direction of their work: Vladimir Britanishsky, Vladimir Uflyand, Gleb
Gorbovsky, and Viktor Berlin. Ryvina embraced the daring and freshness of
the four’s poetry in the spirit of the Thaw and the XX Party Congress:
This is, as it were, a reaction against the huge number of poems that have appeared
this year in the thin and thick journals, the large number of grey poems, often varnish-
ing reality, outwardly patriotic but in essence thoughtless and declaratory, that often
do not, as it were, bear any real weight in their lines, refuting this, these comrades,
each in his own way desires to makes sense of everything that’s happening, extremely
acutely and extremely individually.
Ryvina’s commentary on the work of the four poets was not without
routine criticism of their shortcomings, but the disproportionate amount
of time that she devoted to them indicated how very highly she thought of
them all. She praised Britanishsky for the quality of thought in his poetry,
and the fact that he wrote in a way that contemplated the world around him
independently and interestingly. In particular, she and the seminar liked a
poem which criticised materialistic civil servants who believed that their
cars shielded them from the common people on the street. With regard to
Uflyand, the youngest participant in the seminar (Uflyand was nineteen
at the time), Ryvina commented that his poetry was constructed in an
individual way, but at the same time showed signs of a large number and
81 ‘Pyataya oblastnaya konferentsiya molodykh pisatelei’, TsGALI St Petersburg: f. 371;

op. 1; d. 299.
46 Chapter 1
wide variation of influences, something surprising for such a young poet. In

particular, he showed signs of the influence of early Pasternak, and so, said
Ryvina, the seminar often ‘solved’ rather than read his work, with very inter-
esting results. She ended with the hope and belief that Uflyand would shake
off excessive influence in the near future and find his own voice in poetry.
The third poet of the four, Gleb Gorbovsky, was described as ‘undoubt-
edly interesting’. Ryvina criticised formal aspects of his poems, but praised
him as an independent-minded poet, took him seriously, and encouraged
him to reassess his perspectives and his work in order to improve. Finally,
Viktor Berlin was also praised as an interesting poet, but advised that he
should rethink a lot of ideas to reinforce his position as an intelligent and
thinking writer.
Compared to reports from other seminars, Ryvina’s description of
these poets was long and in depth. It is clear that she wanted very much to
share her discovery of the four young men; she perhaps saw the conference
as an opportunity to give public support for liberal and progressive trends
in literature. Of the four poets, as we have seen, Gorbovsky, Britanishsky,
and possibly Viktor Berlin went on to join the Writers’ Union during the
Thaw; Ryvina’s report probably helped the young poets begin the process
of establishing their careers.
In contrast with the positive impact that the secret speech had for
young writers’ freedom, the Soviet invasion of Hungary prompted the
authorities to extend more control over young people and especially writers.
The invasion prompted outrage among students in the city, and a demon-
stration was held in the Mining Institute on 7 November, just 3 days after
it happened. Many students were arrested, including Krasil'nikov, who had
been shouting ‘Free Hungary’ and ‘Sink Nasser in the Suez Canal’. He was
the only student not to be released fairly quickly, and he spent four years
in the GULag in Mordova.82 Another student, Lidiya Gladkaya, wrote a
poem about the invasion of Hungary which was sympathetic to the liberal
Hungarian intelligentsia, and she got into some trouble over it. Brought
before the faculty Komsomol committee, she was forced to read her poem

and severely reprimanded, but was not in the event expelled from the
Institute. It seems that her membership of the Mining Institute LITO
afforded her some protection against recriminations by the authorities that
an individual like Krasil'nikov did not have.83
In the city institutes, the atmosphere of tolerance which had charac-
terised the Conference of Young Writers diminished, and the authorities
clamped down on student literary activities. At the Lensoviet Technical
Institute a literary paper entitled Kul'tura (Culture), which had been estab-
lished in 1956 with official sponsorship, fell out of favour with the authori-
ties.84 The paper was part of the work of the Komsomol at the Institute. Its
chief editor was Leonid Khanukov, and various students were in charge of
the different sections of the paper: they included Dmitry Bobyshev, Anatoly
Naiman, and Evgeny Rein. Bobyshev explains that it was the mention of
Kul'tura on the Voice of America in the context of anti-Soviet activity which
banged the last nail in the coffin of the project.85 Kul'tura was not the only
student publication to attract unwanted attention from the authorities;
Bobyshev and others assert that a detailed list of all such publications in
Leningrad was drawn up by the authorities at that time;86 the existence
of such a list points to the authorities’ anxiety about unsanctioned and
uncensored literary activities in the city.
Even with its established reputation, the Mining Institute LITO came
under pressure after events in Hungary. During the summer of 1957, its
members published a second collection of poetry which met with the
authorities’ disapproval, and the episode led very quickly to the dissolution
83 Ibid., p. 175.
84 For the story of Kul'tura see Dolinin, ‘Nepodtsenzurnaya literatura i nepodtsenzurnaya
pechat' (Leningrad 1950–1980-kh godov)’, in ILNL, pp. 10–17 (p. 13); Bobyshev, Ya
zdes', pp. 146–58; and Yury Dimitrin, ‘Gazeta “Kul'tura”’, in Samizdat (St Petersburg:
Nauchno-Informatsionnyi Tsentr ‘Memorial’, 2003) pp. 37–9. References to this
collection of articles hereafter given as Samizdat.
85 Bobyshev, Ya zdes', p. 158.
86 Ibid., p. 157. This list is also mentioned in Dolinin, ‘Nepodtsenzurnaya literatura’, p. 13.
Dolinin says it was suggested by Aleksandr Prokof 'ev at a meeting of the Partkom
of the Writers’ Union in 1956 (no source given).
48 Chapter 1
of the LITO a few months later. Of the five hundred copies of the col-
lection produced, only a few survived the decision of the powerful Party
functionary, Frol Kozlov (1908–1965), that the collection contained anti-
Soviet material and should be burnt.87 Almost all the copies were in fact
burnt, publicly, in the yard of the Mining Institute. None of the students
got into trouble, but the episode did not pass by without comments or
consequences. On 12 September 1957, an article appeared in the newspaper
Leningrad Pravda about the LITO producing bad poetry and being under
the malign influence of Gleb Semenov. The popular leader was forced to
resign from running the LITO.88
Semenov was replaced by a stalwart Socialist Realist from the Writers’
Union, Dmitry Levonevsky (1907–1988), who tried to curry favour with
the members of the LITO by allowing them to invite any poet they liked
from the Leningrad Branch of the Union to come to read at one of their
meetings. The group chose to invite Ol'ga Berggol'ts, and she came in
January 1958, accompanied by two men who turned out to be observers
for the Party. To Berggol'ts’s consternation, the LITO was consequently
shut down.89 This episode demonstrates how fragile the political situation
was during the late 1950s. The Mining Institute LITO was probably the
most orthodox of the literary groups in the city, and the closest to official
literature, but even it was not immune to the vigilance of party officials,
and fluctuations in political temperature.
The students of the Mining Institute LITO did not suffer as a result
of their ill-fated collection; in fact, at the Conference of Young Writers the
following year many of them received recommendations that their work
be published: a cycle of Ageev’s poems was recommended to the journal
Neva; Elena Kumpan and Tat'yana Galushko (b. 1937) were recommended
for inclusion in Molodoi Leningrad; Tarutin and Gorodnitsky for inclusion
87 This incident is described in B. Ivanov, ‘V bytnost' Peterburga Leningradom’, Novoe

literaturnoe obozrenie 14 (1995), 188–99 (p. 190); see also Britanishsky, ‘Studencheskoe
poeticheskoe dvizhenie’, p. 176; Koroleva, ‘Anna Akhmatova i leningradskaya poeziya’,
p. 119.
88 Koroleva, ‘Anna Akhmatova i leningradskaya poeziya’, pp. 119–20.
89 Loc. cit.
in a collection entitled Novye stikhi (New poems); and it was suggested that
with some editing, Kushner’s work might be collected and published as a
book.90 Even though as a group the LITO had been criticised, the poets
individually were left unscathed and still benefited from their apprentice-
ship to Semenov.
After the Mining Institute LITO was closed down, Gleb Semenov
began running another group at the First Five-Year Plan House of Culture.91
Sosnora attended this new group a number of times in 1959, as did Viktor
Krivulin, who went on to become one of the central figures of Leningrad
unofficial poetry. Semenov’s new LITO was not based around an educa-
tional institution, nor did it consist mostly of students, as it had at the
Mining Institute, and these changes are characteristic of the poetry move-
ment in general at this time. Although there were still many LITOs attached
to institutes of higher education in the city, even by 1960 the movement
was less dominated by them and their students.92
Another group that was not really part of the student poetry move-
ment, but that became important in the 1960s was a poetry group for
schoolchildren, the Club ‘Derzanie’ (‘Daring’), which had been established
in 1937 and was held at the Palace of Pioneers (the Anichkov Palace in
Leningrad). Many of the poets who in the late 1960s and 1970s would join
the world of unofficial literature and, in some cases, official literary circles,
were students of the ‘Derzanie’ school.93 In 1959 Nina Knyazeva became
a teacher at the club through the recommendation of a friend who had
membership of the Writers’ Union. Knyazeva herself was not a member of
the Party or the Union, and had had difficulty finding work in the closed
90 ‘VI Oblastnaya konferentsiya molodykh pisatelei. 16 May 1958’, TsGALI St Peterburg:

f. 371; op. 1; d. 360.
91 Britanishsky, ‘Studencheskoe poeticheskoe dvizhenie’, p. 180; and see Appendix 1.
92 Loc. cit.
93 On Klub ‘Derzanie’ see: Pedagogicheskii zhurnal ‘Rakurs’ 8 (St Petersburg: Sankt-
Petersburgskii gorodskoi dvorets tvorchestva yunykh, 1997); and Elena Pudovkina,
‘Klub “Derzanie”’, Pchela 26–7 (2000), 75–81.
50 Chapter 1
city of Leningrad after the war; the political Thaw probably facilitated her
appointment to the club at the end of the 1950s.94
Schoolchildren from the ages of eight to sixteen studied poetry and
prose in the classes held in the club; there were also literary Saturdays
held every week, and extra sessions on public holidays. Sometimes official
poets or members of LITOs in the city would come to read their work
and discuss it with the ‘Derzaitsy’, as members of the club were known. In
the poetry classes children learned about strict verse form, and read their
own poems. The club was headed by a man sometimes described as tyran-
nical, yet greatly admired and loved by his students, Aleksey Admiral'sky
(1937–1971); the special atmosphere at the club in the 1960s is generally
attributed to his leadership. Natal'ya Grudinina (1918–1999) also ran one of
the seminars there until she was forced to leave over her defence of Brodsky
at his trial in 1964, after which Irina Malyarova (b. 1934), a young member
of the Writers’ Union noted for her kindness and support of young poets,
took her place.
Every summer the club went away on a trip together, which was
immensely popular with the children. The poet Elena Pudovkina (b. 1950)
remembers that when they travelled to the provinces they learned not only
about a new region or city, but were also often introduced to interesting
literary sites and figures, away from the limelight of St Petersburg:
On our expeditions we were introduced not only, and not so much to the sights of
one or another place, as to the bearers of a culture that was disappearing, whose traces
it was still possible to uncover in various forgotten corners. In Tarusa we met the
daughter of Marina Tsvetaeva (Ariadna Efron), we visited the house of Konstantin
Paustovsky, and some of us met Nadezhda Mandel'shtam.95
With such exposure not only to Soviet but also to Russian literature
in such august persons, and encouragement to develop into independent-
minded young writers, it is perhaps not surprising that few of the children
94 Varvara Mikhailovna Knyazeva, interview with the author, tape recording, St

Petersburg, 7 November 2002.
95 Pudovkina, ‘Klub “Derzanie”’, p. 79.
from ‘Derzanie’ found a place for themselves in official literature later on.
By the time this younger generation reached an age when they might try
to develop a literary career, the liberalisation of the Thaw had all but disap-
peared, and to many the Writers’ Union did not present a very attractive
option. However, writers who attended the club in their childhood include:
Stratanovsky, Krivulin, Shvarts, Elena Ignatova (b. 1947), Viktor Toporov
(b. 1946), Mikhail Yasnov, and Elena Dunaevskaya (b. 1950).
Unofficial Groups of Poets
At the same time as the number of officially-affiliated LITOs was growing

in Leningrad, unofficial groups of poets were also forming. Some of these
groups deliberately avoided the institutionalised LITOs; one such group
associated with Leonid Aronzon (1938–1970), a poet whose work was much
admired among unofficial writers.96 Other poets attended LITOs but
met outside the official organisations as well. The poets Vladimir Uflyand,
Lev Lifshits (later Loseff ), Mikhail Eremin, Leonid Vinogradov (1936–
2004), and Sergey Kulle (1936–1984) were such a group. They entered the
Philological Faculty of Leningrad State University in 1954 and very quickly
became friends with each other and with the older students Krasil'nikov,
Mikhailov, and Aleksandr Kondratov (1937–1993). They attended the
LITO at the university, but also met up outside this officially-run group,
and Loseff recalls that then their behaviour was often provocative, sub-
versive, and drunken. Drinking vodka was, in Loseff ’s view, imbibing the
courage to challenge Soviet authority, and this was an important part of
the creative energy of this group.97 The young men’s behaviour was delib-
erately eccentric in public – for example, lying down and stargazing on
Nevsky Prospect at evening rush hour. This group of poets is often referred
96 See Appendix 2.
97 Loseff, ‘Tulupy my’, p. 211.
52 Chapter 1
to as the ‘philological school’, and was well known among young poets in
Leningrad. Uflyand, Vinogradov, Eremin, and Kulle were very much a
group, calling themselves at first the ‘refreshers’ (osvezhiteli), and, much
later, by an acronym of the initials of their surnames, ‘UVEK’.98
In the second half of the 1950s, groups of students at various institutes
of higher education in Leningrad began producing journals and broad-
sheets independently of the officially organised LITOs and conferences.
In November 1955, in the Philological Faculty of the University, a journal
entitled Goluboi buton (The blue bud) was produced independently by
students in their third and fifth years in the Philological and Journalism
faculties.99 The name is taken from the avant-garde group of artists from the
1920s, ‘Golubaya roza’ (‘The blue rose’); the students named their group a
‘bud’ not a rose to acknowledge their youth and artistic immaturity.100 It
was not organised in connection with any LITO, but in a student hostel
of the university; it included stories and poems by these students, who
declared in the introduction to their almanac that:
Our pressing task is to master form. We will struggle against sterility of form and
vulgarity of content. These are the only conditions we shall impose on our work,
which in all other respects must be free.
The less we constrain ourselves and the more we search and experiment, the better.
We do not exclude the possibility that our attempts will sometimes lead to absurdity,
especially from the point of view of the reader, and we will be attacked for this. But
even so, it is better to be abused than to preserve a calm self-satisfaction and never
move, bowing and scraping to the authorities.101
98 UVEK was the title given to a samizdat collection of the work of these four poets
which they produced in 1977, the year that they all turned 40.
99 Fullest details of this journal are given in Nikolay Solokhin, ‘Podsnezhniki “ottepeli”’,
in Samizdat, pp. 22–31 (pp. 26–9); see also Dolinin, ‘Nepodtsenzurnaya literatura’,
p. 10.
100 This was explained in the foreword to the journal, which is reproduced in Samizdat,
p. 130.
101 Loc. cit.
The number of copies made is not known for sure, but Dolinin suggests
there were no more than four, one of which survives in a private archive.102
When the authorities learned of the project, the students involved were
criticised by the Komsomol, but allowed to continue their studies – unlike
Krasil'nikov and Mikhailov before 1953; the journal, on the other hand, was
silenced. Goluboi buton seems to have been the first of a series of small-scale,
independent journals produced in the latter half of the 1950s.
After Goluboi buton, the journals Svezhie golosa (Fresh voices), pro-
duced at the Institute of Railway Transport Engineering, and Eres' (Heresy),
produced by students at the LITO held at the Library Institute, appeared
in 1956.103 Students involved in Eres' included Boris Vail', who later pro-
duced and circulated political samizdat, for which he was twice arrested
and sentenced to terms in the GULag; and Nonna Slepakova, who went
on to become a professional poet, playwright and translator. Broadsheets
produced and pasted up without official approval included Litfront litfaka
(The literary front of the literary faculty) at the Herzen Pedagogical Institute,
which aroused the wrath of the regional branch of the Party and resulted
in some students being relegated to studying on evening courses or in the
provinces.104
These independently produced journals and broadsheets indicate, first,
that there was a trend to produce and publish literature among students at
this time, and, second, that many of these students were apparently not too
intimidated by the prospect of recriminations to write and produce their
work. The very different careers of Slepakova and Vail', who cooperated in
producing Eres', also suggest that students’ involvement in unauthorised
activities such as this during the 1950s did not preclude their later assimila-
tion by the establishment, although many such writers did remain unofficial.
The number of independently produced manuscripts and publications in
102 ‘Goluboi buton’, in Vyacheslav Dolinin and Dmitry Severyukhin, eds, Samizdat
Leningrada, 1950-e– 1980-e: literaturnaya entsiklopediya (Moscow: Novoe literatur-
noe obozrenie, 2003), p. 399.
103 Vyacheslav Dolinin, ‘Nepodtsenzurnaya literatura’, p. 11.
104 Mikhail Konosov, ‘“Litfront Litfaka”: Kak my khoronili sotsialisticheskii realizm’,
in Samizdat, pp. 40–5.
54 Chapter 1
the 1950s and early 1960s was apparently small in comparison with those
produced later on in the 1960s and 1970s. They seem to have been produced
not as a response to difficulties with publishing, as ‘full-blown’ samizdat
would be in the coming decades, but as a part of typical student enthusiasms
and activities which had been encouraged by the political thaw.
When the student poets of the 1950s began to graduate, the poetry
movement developed with them, as we have seen, from its roots in the
institutes of higher education in Leningrad into a broader section of soci-
ety. At this time Iosif Brodsky also began to appear in Leningrad literary
circles.105 It seems that Brodsky began to attend LITOs in the city in 1958,
although at this stage he was not well acquainted with his future friends
who became known as ‘Akhmatova’s orphans’, nor with the Proto-Futurists.
He took part in many different aspects of the literary culture of the time,
including, from 1957 onwards, the geological expeditions that were very
popular with poets.106 While it is true that he moved in student circles in
the second half of the 1950s, he did not emerge from the student poetry
movement, and unofficial groups were probably more important for him
than officially-organised activities.
Brodsky attended translation classes run by Vladimir Admoni (1909–
1993) at the Herzen Pedagogical Institute, and tried to join the ‘Narva gate’
LITO run by Natal'ya Grudinina, but she refused to take him because she
thought him ‘hysterical’. He never became an official member of any group,
but visited various LITOs from 1958: they included for certain the LITO at
the Polytechnic Institute, and the group at the First Five-Year Plan House
of Culture, which was said to have had a particularly serious and literary
atmosphere.107 Gordin recalls that Brodsky went occasionally to the uni-
versity LITO, but was not popular with its leader Naumov because in 1957,
at a reading of Gordin’s poetry at the Students’ Literary Society, Brodsky
quoted from Trotsky’s Literature and Revolution as an introduction to a
105 Viktor Kulle, ‘Iosif Brodsky: Novaya odisseya’, in Sochineniya Iosifa Brodskogo, ed.
L. B. Kupriyanov (St Petersburg: Pushkinskii fond, 1997), pp. 283–97 (p. 286).
106 Anatoly Pikach, ‘I ot chego my bol'she daleki’, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 14 (1995),
p. 182; Gorbovsky, Ostyvshie sledy, p. 247; Ludmila Stern, Osya, Iosif, Joseph, p. 54.
107 Gordin, ‘LITO: kartina byla pestraya’.
point he wished to make, and Naumov threw him out of the meeting. He is
said always to have been in the company of other poets in the late 1950s,108
but he was different from many of these associates inasmuch as he was not
a student in any institute of higher education and did not become a proper
member of any LITO. The fact that Brodsky did not have official affiliation
to any institution or group was something which fuelled the prosecution’s
arguments against him at his trial in 1964.109
Brodsky begins to appear frequently in memoirs of the poetry move-
ment of the Thaw from 1959 onwards, and this suggests that he began, at the
age of nineteen, to meet other young poets and participate in the literary
youth culture in the city at this time.110 As Loseff notes, he did not write
poetry as a child, beginning only in his late teens: he had not belonged to
children’s poetry clubs from which students moved on to LITOs.111 It must
be acknowledged, however, that references to Brodsky are also numerous
because of his subsequent fame, and so it is difficult to distinguish between
the extent to which he played a part in the poetry movement of the Thaw,
and the magnitude of his subsequent role in modern Russian poetry. Rein
remembers being introduced to Brodsky for the first time in October
1960.112 For Brodsky this was a very important meeting, because Rein
became both a major influence on him, and a good friend; through Rein,
Brodsky became acquainted with Bobyshev and Naiman. In the spring of
1961, at an evening of poetry at the Philological Faculty of Leningrad State
University, the four poets read their work together.113 This suggests that
108 Koroleva, ‘Anna Akhmatova i leningradskaya poeziya’, p. 118, and loc. cit.
109 Yakov Gordin, ‘Delo Brodskogo’, Neva 2 (1989), 134–66 (p. 158).
110 Viktor Krivulin, ‘Poeziya – eto razgovor samogo yazyka’, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie
14 (1995), 223–33 (p. 225); Vladimir Uflyand, ‘One of the Freest Men’, in Valentina
Polukhina, Brodsky Through the Eyes of his Contemporaries (New York: St Martin’s
Press, 1992), pp. 140–57; and Lev Loseff, Iosif Brodsky. Opyt literaturnoi biografii
(Moscow: Molodaya gvardiya, 2006), pp. 65–6.
111 Loseff, Iosif Brodsky, p. 53.
112 Evgeny Rein, ‘The Introduction of the Prosaic into Poetry’, in Polukhina, Brodsky
through the Eyes, p. 57. Bobyshev believes that they met in 1960; it may have been
that Bobyshev and Brodsky did not meet until then. Bobyshev, Ya zdes', p. 262.
113 Blue Lagoon Anthology, vol. 2B, p. 269.
56 Chapter 1
by that time Brodsky had got to know the other ‘orphans’, and this group
of friends had become established.
This now famous group of four was not a student poetry group,
although as individuals they had been involved with the student poetry
movement during the 1950s. They formed a salon at Naiman’s wife’s flat,
and met independently of organised groups.114 The greatest influence on
them became Anna Akhmatova – a figure who, like them, was not com-
pletely endorsed by the official literary establishment. At some time in
1960 Evgeny Rein had visited Akhmatova in her flat on Krasnaya Konnitsa
street and read some poetry to her. She asked him to help her move some
books to her new flat, and he agreed and returned a few days later with
Bobyshev to do so. This seems to be how the four whom later Akhmatova
dubbed the ‘magic choir’ first established contact with the famous Silver
Age poet.115 Rein recalls that on 7 August the same year he took Brodsky
to Komarovo and introduced him to Akhmatova, and Brodsky read to her.
The friendship between Akhmatova and the four poets became strong.
Later, Naiman worked as Akhmatova’s secretary in her remaining years,
and his friends were very close to her, seeing her very often.
Akhmatova was important to the young poets who visited her and
cultivated her friendship because she had a conception of art and poetry
completely different from that of the Soviet authorities. As a survivor
from the beginning of Soviet literature she, and others of her generation,
were not so much poetic influences, as teachers of culture and sources of
continuity with tradition.116 Many other young poets visited Akhmatova
as well in the late 1950s and 1960s, including Viktor Krivulin, Evgeny
Pazukhin (b. 1945), David Shraer-Petrov, Nina Koroleva, and Aleksandr
Kushner. Brodsky says that Akhmatova saw and heard more young poets
read in Leningrad at this time than anybody else.117
114 Krivulin, ‘Poeziya – eto razgovor’, p. 228.

115 Evgeny Rein, ‘Sotoe zerkalo’, in Koroleva, Kovalenko, Svoyu mezh vas, pp. 102–16.
116 Ibid., pp. 112–13.
117 Solomon Volkov, ‘Vspominaya Annu Akhmatovu. Razgovor s Iosifom Brodskim’,
in Koroleva, Kovalenko, Svoyu mezh vas, pp. 60–101 (p. 66).
In the late 1950s and 1960s, some other groups of poets that formed
independently of the LITOs were adopted by older figures in the same way
that Anna Akhmatova supported her ‘magic choir’. Lidiya Ginzburg, for
example, associated with a group of young writers which included Yakov
Gordin, Andrey Bitov, Reid Grachev, and Aleksandr Kushner.118 This
group seems to have met often at Grachev’s flat on Zhelyabov Street.119
In the 1950s, the liberal writer Kirill Kostsinsky became a friend to many
young poets who would gather at his flat for literary evenings and liberal,
open conversation.120 Kostsinsky, however, attracted the attention of the
Party authorities with his outspoken and sometimes anti-Soviet views, his
foreign friends, and his interest in the foreign press; in 1960 was arrested
and sentenced to 5 years in the GULag. Other unofficial groups grew up
around one, or often a pair of charismatic young poets. Eremin and Uflyand
were one such pair, and Khvostenko and Volokhonsky another; later on
in the 1960s, both Aronzon and Kuz'minsky became central figures of
unofficial groups.121
This shift of the poetry movement away from educational institutions
meant that many young Leningrad poets of the 1960s were not studying
any more, but had jobs. At this time, lots of poets who probably hoped to
become professional writers but had not yet managed to publish their work
began to earn money writing children’s literature and drama and translating
literature.122 At the end of the 1950s, Evgeny Rein and Anatoly Naiman both
wrote plays for the Leningrad stage, and then took screen-writing courses at
VGIK in Moscow to gain a professional qualification.123 After working as
118 Carol Ueland, ‘Unknown Figure in a Wintry Landscape: Reid Grachev and Leningrad
Literature of the Sixties’, Slavic and East European Journal, vol. 43 no. 2 (1999), 361–9
(p. 361).
119 Boris Ivanov, ‘Reid Grachev’, in ILNL, pp. 49–59 (p. 51).
120 Mochalov, ‘Gleb-gvardii semenovskogo polka …’; Kirill Kostsinsky, V teni Bol'shogo
doma. Vospominaniya (Tenafly, NJ: Ermitazh, 1987); Gorbovsky, Ostyvshie sledy,
p. 212.
121 Kalomirov, ‘Dvadtsat' let noveishei russkoi poezii’.
122 Blue Lagoon Anthology, vol. 2B, pp. 642–4.
123 Bobyshev describes how Rein and Naiman found work in Moscow: Dmitry Bobyshev,
Avtoportret v litsakh. Chelovekotekst, kniga II (Moscow: Vremya, 2008), p. 157.
58 Chapter 1
a chemical engineer for some years, Bobyshev found work in television in

Leningrad. Uflyand and Slepakova are well known for their children’s plays
that were performed at Leningrad theatres, and Eremin and Vinogradov
also became involved in writing for the theatre in the late 1950s. Loseff,
who counted such poets as friends but did not start writing poetry himself
until later, was the most deeply entrenched of these young writers in the
Soviet literary establishment: he not only wrote plays for puppet theatre,
but was also an editor at the children’s journal Koster (The bonfire) from
1962–75. Brodsky, too, tried to support himself through literary work in
the theatre, but did not find a niche for himself.
The opportunity for these poets who were not members of the Union
to earn money as ‘freelance’ writers is characteristic of the Thaw period. At
some point around this time the professional organisation gruppkom was
formed, which seems to have been associated with the Litfond. Poets could
join these organisations without becoming full members of the Writers’
Union, and this membership assured the authorities that the person was
legitimately occupied with literary work.124 It was also easier to find work
writing for the theatre and television than to publish poetry, because a play
could be passed for performance or a programme for production without
124 I am grateful to Irina Paperno for highlighting the significance for poets of affiliation
to this professional organisation. Little mention is made of it in accounts of literature
in the period; one significant document is Brodsky’s application for membership of
gruppkom in 1965, published in Ya. Gordin, compiler, and I. Meraveva, ed., Mir Iosifa
Brodskogo. Putevoditel' (St Petersburg: Zvezda, 2003), p. 458. Eduard Shneiderman
has mentioned that Oleg Okhapkin had membership of a ‘profgruppa’ in 1975, which
seems likely to be the same as gruppkom: Eduard Shneiderman, interview with the
author, tape recording, St Petersburg, 19 November 2002. David Dar makes refer-
ence to Okhapkin’s belonging to the gruppkom too: David Dar, ‘Leningrad. Sud'ba.
Poet’, Grani 110 (1978), 43–57. In an email dated 9 February 2005, Elena Dunaevskaya
explained to me that a profgruppa pri Litfonde SSSR was founded at some point in
the 1960s, and that its members were professional writers who for some reason did
not belong to the Writers’ Union. They were, however, members of the Litfond. The
history of both organisations has yet to be investigated.
being approved for publication.125 Later on in the 1960s, when there was
a clearer division between official and unofficial writers, poets found that
they could not work on the periphery of the literary world so easily.
Sintaksis and Alternative Publishing
In the early Thaw, when the division between official and unofficial writers
was not so pronounced, there were a number of opportunities for young
poets to get involved in literary activities, and in particular to take part
in public readings. It was notoriously difficult, however, to move from
this stage to most important step of publishing work. During the Thaw,
readings were a kind of ‘grey area’ which was not as strictly controlled as it
would be in the years of the Stagnation; in the same way that some plays
were performed but not published, poems were read in public which were
deemed unacceptable or not ready for publication. Although glad of the
chance to read in public, poets often became frustrated that they were not
able to advance their careers further and get into print. As a substitute, the
phenomenon of unofficial publishing gradually began to grow.
Two significant developments in the culture of alternative publish-
ing, which attracted attention in the West at the time, occurred at the end
125 Vladimir Uflyand, interview with the author, tape recording, St Petersburg, 26 May
2003. The written word was always considered more powerful than performance and
was subject to greater control. In 1946 the journal Leningrad was famously attacked
and then closed after publishing Zoshchenko’s story ‘Priklyucheniya obez'yany’; when
questioned, the editor Likharev explained that he had considered the story accept-
able for publication since it had been passed for public reading by Glavrepertkom in
Moscow; Stalin angrily responded that he should understand the difference between
an approval for performance and one for publication. See Vlast' i khudozhestven-
naya intelligentsiya. Dokumenty TsK RKP(b), VChK-OGPU-NKVD o kul'turnoi
politike 1917–1953 ed. by A. N. Yakovlev, comp. by A. Artizov, O. Naumov (Moscow:
MFD, 1999), pp. 566–81. Also available at <www.sovlit.ru/articles/stenogramma_
stalin_i_%20dr_1946.html> accessed 6 August 2008.
60 Chapter 1
of the 1950s: Mikhail Naritsa (1909–1993) became the first Leningrad

writer to send work abroad to be published in tamizdat; and Aleksandr
Ginzburg produced three volumes of the samizdat collection Sintaksis
(Syntax). Naritsa’s story Nespetaya pesnya (Unsung song) was published in
the émigré journal Grani (Borders),126 and although he used a pseudonym
(Narymov) he was subsequently arrested for the third time in his life and
put in a prison psychiatric hospital.127 Ginzburg’s Sintaksis was produced
in Moscow in 1959–60 and was the first large-scale samizdat publication
of a literary nature. The first edition was produced in 1959, and ran to 300
copies. The second appeared in February 1960, also in 300 copies. The
third was produced in April 1960 and ran to 120 copies. All three were
later published in Grani.128
The third issue of Sintaksis was devoted to Leningrad poets, and in it
the work of Bobyshev, Brodsky, Gorbovsky, Viktor Golyavkin (1929–2001),
Eremin, Kulle, Kushner, Rein, Slepakova, and Uflyand was published.129
The poems are very diverse: they show far more variation than poems in
official publications in terms of both theme and form, and thus would
appear to represent more accurately than the official, Soviet journals the
scope of poetry being written in Leningrad at the time. The selections of
work by Gorbovsky, Kushner, and Slepakova could probably have been
published in the Soviet press: their formal aspects meet the requirements
of Socialist Realism, and the themes and subject matter of the poems do
not contravene the norms of Soviet poetry. This does not mean that they
are not interesting, of course. The work of Kushner, for example, which is
written in ‘strict form’, is formally engaging because he does not confine
himself to the alternating rhyme schemes and four-line stanzas typical of
Socialist Realist poetry. The rhyme scheme of ‘V zashchitu sentimentalizma’
(‘In defence of sentimentalism’), for example, is a complex combination
of alternating rhyme and rhyming couplets, creating a sophisticated and
126 Narymov, Nespetaya pesnya, Grani 48 (1960), 5–113.

127 See his account of his incarceration in a psychiatric hospital: M. A. Naritsa, ‘Posle
reabilitatsii’, in Vestnik ‘Memoriala’ 4/5 (10/11) (1995), 45–51.
128 Sintaksis 1, 2, and 3, ed. by Aleksandr Ginzburg, Grani 58 (1965), 95–193.
129 Sintaksis 3, ed. by Aleksandr Ginzburg, Grani 58 (1965), 163–93.
literary tone in the poem. The references to Karamzin and sentimentalism

also set this poem apart as particularly literary.
The work of the other poets in Sintaksis would probably not have been
considered publishable by the Soviet authorities. Some poems are written
in strict form, but concern subjects that would not have been acceptable to
Soviet literature: for example Uflyand’s poem ‘Nabrav vody dlya umyvaniya’
(‘After drawing water for washing’) about a worker who could not get the
moon out of the water in the well, and his ironic poem ‘Smert' lyubimoi’
(Death of a loved one). In others, notably by Brodsky, verse form and lan-
guage are more foregrounded than the subject matter, a characteristic in
poetry which routinely incurred accusations from Soviet critics of formal-
izm (excessive attention to form). The poems by Bobyshev and Eremin are
obscure and difficult by the standards of Soviet poetry and would have failed
to meet the official requirements of Party spirit ( partiinost' ), ideological
correctness (ideinost' ), and folk ethos (narodnost' ), as can be seen from the
first few lines of the poem by Bobyshev which opens the journal:
Равнодушие –
Набитый льдом,
Наполненный снегом дом.
Равнодушие –
Не для жилья,
Для замораживанья дом.
Погреб. Плюшевый склеп.
Равнодушие. Дом.
Indifference –/ packed with ice,/ a house filled with snow./ Indifference –/ not for
living,/ a house for freezing./ A cellar. A plush tomb./ Indifference. A house.
The breadth of poetry in the collection suggests that Ginzburg had no par-
ticular agenda when he compiled Sintaksis; he was not prejudiced against
poetry which satisfied the requirements of Socialist Realism, but included
any work which he considered to be well written and of interest.
Sintaksis is a good example of 1960s samizdat which, although pro-
duced independently of the authorities, was not necessarily conceived of as
62 Chapter 1
in opposition to them. It has been argued that participation in the journal,

in effect, put an end to the chances of the poet concerned ever becoming
part of official literature.130 This was clearly not necessarily so, because
Gorbovsky, Kushner, and Slepakova went on to become members of the
Writers’ Union, notwithstanding the fact that Ginzburg himself, as chief
editor and initiator, was arrested and sent to the GULag. As a rule, it is not
possible to trace a poet’s career through the Thaw period and unambigu-
ously classify him or her as an unofficial or official writer. This is especially
true of the 1950s. As Krivulin has explained, until the mid-1960s there was
not really a distinction between official and unofficial poets, because until
this time an illusion persisted that everybody would be treated equally
and that everything stood a chance of being published.131 It is important
to recognise this, for it shows that Sintaksis was not a group of die-hard
unofficial poets whose inclusion in this collection sealed off any chance of
a future professional career.
Much of the unofficial literary culture and publishing of the 1960s was
on a smaller scale than Sintaksis, and was thus tolerated to a greater degree
than Ginzburg’s project. As Savitsky says, at this early stage,
Samizdat existed only in typed or handwritten form of which 3–5 copies were pro-
duced and circulated (a typewriter was a little-available luxury). It was common to
take part in poetry readings and to visit the ‘right’ cafés.132
Certain cafés became popular with poets, including: ‘Kafe poetov’ (‘Poets’
café’) on Poltavskya Street; ‘Buratino’ on the corner of Nekrasov and
Vosstaniya Streets; ‘Belye nochi’ (‘White nights’) on the corner of Sadovaya
and Maiorova Streets; ‘Ulybka’ (‘Smile’); ‘Rovesnik’ (‘Contemporary’);
‘Seraya loshad'’ (‘Grey horse’); ‘Molekula’ (‘Molecule’) at the Institute
of Higher Molecular Fusion; and the café at the Herzen Pedagogical
130 Kulle, ‘Iosif Brodsky’, p. 287.

132 Savitsky, ‘Khelenukty v teatre povsednevnosti. Leningrad. Vtoraya polovina 60-kh
godov’, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 2 (1998), 210–59 (p. 221).
Institute.133 Cafés were fairly safe, public places to meet and apparently
did not attract too much attention from the KGB; at least, even if agents
were there, the atmosphere was not perceived as threatening by the poets
or audience. Sometimes cafés organised readings in advance and advertised
them, but at other times poets would give impromptu readings to whoever
happened to be in the café at the time.
In a similarly informal way, samizdat began to increase in circulation.
Most samizdat at this time was not bound, nor was it produced with the
intention of circulating it widely or systematically; rather, those who had
rare and precious access to a typist or typewriter might have their poems
typed up and give carbon copies to friends to read or to keep. These copies
could be reproduced in their turn, however, so poets had no way of knowing
or controlling how widely their work was read or circulated. In this way,
samizdat manuscripts proliferated and spread among poets and readers in
Leningrad, and even to their counterparts in Moscow.134
There were more ‘professional’ samizdat manuscripts as well, which
were typed carefully and bound into books. Ludmila Stern has described
how she typed and bound such an edition of Evgeny Rein’s poems in 1963,
even pasting a photograph of the poet onto the cover.135 Probably about
the same time, she produced Bobyshev’s first collection as well, Partita.136
There were some ‘regular’ producers of samizdat, such as the enthusiasts
Konstantin Kuz'minsky (b. 1940) and Boris Taigin (b. 1928). Taigin was
probably among the first to make samizdat books for poets in the post-Sta-
lin period. He bound editions of poets’ works in his do-it-yourself publish-
ing house, which he called ‘Bе-Та’. The average print run was ten copies.137
Konstantin Kuz'minsky was one of the most active members of Leningrad
133 Loc. cit.

134 Elena Shvarts, interview with the author, St Petersburg, 17 September 2003; Boris
Taigin, interview with the author, tape recording, St Petersburg, 21 November
2002.
135 Stern, Osya, Iosif, Joseph, p. 50.
137 Gleb Gorbovsky, ‘O Borise Taigine’, in Boris Taigin, Pravo na sebya (St Petersburg:
LIO Redaktor, 1992), pp. 3–4. See also Nina Koroleva, ‘Boris Taigin’, Voprosy
64 Chapter 1
poetry circles from the late 1950s onwards. He wrote his own poetry which
he published in samizdat and, notably, in Suzanne Massie’s The Living
Mirror, and collected and published in samizdat the work of many of his
fellow poets. When he emigrated from the USSR in 1975 he took with
him a wealth of samizdat manuscripts; from these and from memory he
compiled The Blue Lagoon Anthology of Modern Russian Poetry.
In 1961 and 1962 Taigin produced two editions of a samizdat jour-
nal entitled Prizma (Prism);138 the third edition was prepared but never
reproduced. Both editions contained selections of the work of three poets
(in both cases one of these was Taigin himself, using a pseudonym) and
between 100 and 200 copies were apparently produced.139 In 1962 Grigory
Kovalev and Taigin collected and bound the first book of Brodsky’s poetry,
and Kovalev and Vladimir Sokolov began compiling a collection of poetry
entitled Antologiya sovetskoi patologii (Anthology of Soviet pathology), which
became the prototype for The Blue Lagoon Anthology. When the Kovalev/
Sokolov collection was completed, over one hundred copies were produced.
Grigory Kovalev, who was blind, was another very active member of the
poetry underground: Krivulin describes him as ‘a living tape recorder’ who
knew everyone’s poems; he was considered a barometer of taste, and would
always say what he thought about a poem or a poet. The fact that he was blind,
Krivulin says, protected him from recriminations by the authorities.140
Many poets’ work circulated widely in samizdat in the 1960s. For
some this was the only way to publish; others occasionally had their work
included in official collections and were working themselves into a posi-
tion where their collections might be published. It seems that samizdat
was commonly envisaged as a temporary stage, although no poet could
be sure that his or her work would be officially published later on. When
in emigration Brodsky was asked when he realised that his work would
never be published in the USSR, he replied that, until he left in 1972, he
literatury 3 (2009), available at <http://magazines.russ.ru/voplit/2009/3/ko10.

html>, accessed 19 August 2009.
138 Ivanov, ‘V bytnost' Peterburga’, p. 191.
139 ‘Prizma’, in Samizdat Leningrada, p. 444.
never really knew for sure it would not be.141 This is corroborated by the
Moscow poet and artist Dmitry Prigov, who described the Soviet literary
world in the 1960s thus:
The sixties were the actualisation and realisation of unofficial art on the wave of
the Khrushchev reforms. At the same time there was the illusion that unofficial art
would soon become official and state sponsored.142
On the Periphery of Official Literature
In 1960, an independent LITO was established at the evening class of the

Philological Faculty of Leningrad State University, which was neither affili-
ated to, nor run by the Writers’ Union.143 It produced the samizdat journal
Optima, which ran for five issues and first published the later famous poet
Nikolay Rubtsov (1936–1971).144 This LITO was fairly successful while
it lasted, despite being independent of the Writers’ Union; its members
even read at the University LITO one evening. Shneiderman recalls that
after the reading, which was well received, the Optima poets wanted to
show the LITO leader Naumov their journal. He declined even to have
a look, stating categorically that he would have nothing to do with it.
Shneiderman was surprised that the Thaw had affected Naumov so little,
and that he was so afraid of association with unofficial culture. As Prigov
says, while it seemed to young poets of the 1960s that they might soon be
141 Valentina Polukhina, ed., Iosif Brodsky. Bol'shaya kniga interv'yu (Moscow: Zakharov,
2000), p. 7.
142 Comment by Dmitry Prigov, quoted in Stanislav Savitsky, ‘Semidesyatye: trudnoe
utro posle shumnogo prazdnika’, Pchela 12 (1998) [page numbers not known], also
at <http://www.pchela.ru/ podshiv/12/hard_morning.htm>.
143 Eduard Shneiderman, ‘Chto ya izdaval, v chem uchastvoval’, in Samizdat,
pp. 50–1.
144 Eduard Shneiderman, interview with the author, tape recording, St Petersburg, 19
November 2002.
66 Chapter 1
accepted into official literary circles, the situation looked very different to
the establishment. All along, unofficial activities were leading towards the
formation of an independent underground.
Indeed, instead of working harder to bring young writers and their
amateur activities closer to official literature, at the beginning of the 1960s
the Leningrad Branch of the Writers’ Union grew increasingly complacent
over the issue of ‘work with young writers’, possibly because its efforts to
introduce young blood into Soviet poetry had been acknowledged by the
Party. Archival material shows that members of the Union’s Board seem to
have considered that they were making enough effort and creating enough
opportunities to help young poets develop careers. At a meeting on 18
May 1961, the then chairman Boris Likharev (1906–1962) declared he no
longer saw the causes for concern over work with young writers that had
been expressed so often in the previous decade:
We can no longer say that young writers receive little attention – their poems are
published in journals, they have creative interviews, they are featured on the radio,
they are given critiques of their work.145
This comment suggests that the Union members were quite out of touch
with the position of young writers; in reality, although there were LITOs,
competitions, and readings for young writers, it was still, as it had always
been, extremely difficult for them to get their work published.
Some poets, in particular from the Mining Institute LITO, were pub-
lishing their work in journals and almanacs and taking steps towards joining
the literary establishment at this time: Britanishsky published his first col-
lection in 1958; Gorbovsky and Koroleva in 1960; and Sosnora and Ageev
in 1962. The latter were both published in Moscow.146 Early publications
of young poets such as these were usually facilitated by the recommenda-
tions given to publishing houses by official writers after the conferences
145 ‘Stenogrammy zasedanii pravleniya 18 May 1961’, TsGALI St Petersburg: f. 371; op.
1; d. 418.
146 Vladimir Britanishsky, ‘Leonid Ageev’, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 14 (1995), 255–9
(p. 255).
of young writers. After the 1960 conference many recommendations were

made: Sosnora, Galushko, Gordin (who attended the university LITO
while a student), Tarutin, Gorodnitsky, Malyarova, and Slepakova were
recommended to various journals and almanacs; Sosnora, Gorbovsky,
Kushner, and Lev Gavrilov (b. 1931) were recommended as ready to publish
collections of their poetry.147 Two years later, only three poets were recom-
mended to journals and almanacs, another indication that the Union was
cooling in its enthusiasm to promote young writers.
Even at the height of the Thaw, publication was still not an easy thing
to achieve. When in 1962 Brodsky published for the first time, in the jour-
nal for children Koster, he was helped by Naiman, who was friends with
Loseff, who worked as an editor at the journal: contacts and friendships
were important in publishing, as in all spheres of life in Soviet Russia, and
an editor in a publishing house was an extremely valuable acquaintance.148
One of the editors at Sovetskii pisatel' in Leningrad, Igor' Kuz'michev, had
been a member of the LITO at Leningrad State University for a year before
he began working at the publishing house in 1956. Young poets who knew
him from the LITO considered him to be ‘on their side’ and would some-
times informally ask him for advice before formally proposing a selection
of poems for publication.149 He could look at their work and make some
suggestions for improvements to help them at this early stage.
Once a poet had published a collection of work, he or she could think
about applying for membership of the Writers’ Union; background and
contacts were important when it came to this process as well. Boris Vakhtin
(b. 1930), who was the son of the writer Vera Panova (1905–1973), was
accepted into the translation section of the Writers’ Union in 1961.150 His
professional literary background made him a likely candidate for the Union.
147 ‘VII Mezhoblastnaya konferentsiya molodykh avtorov. Zasedanie 13 Marta 1960’,

TsGALI St Petersburg: f. 371; op. 1; d. 413.
148 Lev Loseff, ‘A New Conception of Poetry’, in Polukhina, Brodsky Through the Eyes,
pp. 113–39 (p. 120).
149 Igor' Sergeevich Kuz'michev, interview with the author, tape recording, St Petersburg,
19 November 2002.
150 Shraer-Petrov, ‘Druz'ya i teni’, p. 248.
68 Chapter 1
Vakhtin’s contemporary Vasily Betaki (b. 1930), by comparison, did not

have such close contacts with the literary world, and took many more years
to gain membership of the Union. Although he left his job in a museum
to become a full-time writer in 1962, he was not accepted by the Writers’
Union until 1969.151
A poet rarely made inroads into the literary establishment without
the support or sponsorship of an already established poet, who would help
his or her protégés first publish their work and then make an application
to join the Writers’ Union.152 Archival material and recent publications
show that Vera Panova and Vadim Shefner supported the publication of
Britanishsky’s first collection;153 Boris Slutsky supported Ageev’s literary
career; and the powerful Moscow poet Nikolay Aseev supported Viktor
Sosnora.154 Sometimes when a poet had difficulty in making a career in
Leningrad, he or she tried to do so in Moscow instead, where it was easier
to find a way into the literary world. Britanishsky records that Ageev, for
example, had trouble getting published in Leningrad and so sought sup-
port in the capital.155 Nina Koroleva is another poet who pursued a career
in Moscow. Although she published her first collection in Leningrad in
1960, she later got into some trouble with the authorities over a poem which
was judged to be seditious and over contact with foreigners, and had to
shift her attention to Moscow where she published in some of the major
journals. She later returned to Leningrad, and was eventually accepted
into the Union there.156
Even when poets had begun to make names for themselves, they could
easily fall prey to critics. From time to time young poets were attacked with
crushing articles in the press or harsh criticisms at a reading or discussion
151 Betaki, Russkaya poeziya za 30 let, p. ii.

152 See G. S. Smith, ‘Russian Poetry since 1945’, in Neil Cornwell, ed., The Routledge
Companion to Russian Literature (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), pp. 197–
208 (p. 199).
153 ‘Britanishsky Vladimir L'vovich’, in Samizdat Leningrada, p. 112.
154 Asserted by Massie, The Living Mirror, p. 49.
155 Britanishsky, ‘Leonid Ageev’, p. 255.
156 Koroleva, ‘Anna Akhmatova i leningradskaya poeziya’, p. 120.
of their work, which could damage their reputations and even jeopardise
their careers. After the publication of Britanishsky’s first collection Poiski
(Searches), an article appeared in the newspaper Leningrad Pravda entitled
‘Off the pedestal!’ in which the young poet was very strongly criticised.157
Aleksandr Kushner suffered similar attacks, not only in the press, but also
at the Writers’ Union. In her notebooks Lidiya Ginzburg recorded a dis-
cussion in 1962, before Kushner’s debut collection Pervoe vpechatlenie
(First impression) was published, at which Kushner was compared very
unfavourably to his contemporary Sosnora.158 Ginzburg describes how the
discussion set out to malign Kushner from the beginning:
The attack on Kushner was opened by Kezhun during the break. A conversation ‘in
the wings’ because he, unfortunately, had to leave. He prefers Sosnora because he is
close to life. Kushner is all bookish, literature.
The judgement was passed in advance. In fact, Sosnora is deeply literary with his
rhythmic experimentation. But for some reason it has been decided that Sosnora
is more one of us (surname? work in a factory?); this has been decided primarily
because he has been placed in opposition to Kushner. Therefore Sosnora is not intel-
ligentsia, is not bookish, and is not a cosmopolitan. And nobody is going to concern
himself with him.159
Ginzburg’s comments strongly suggest how formulaic, arbitrary, prejudiced,

and groundless such attacks could be. Kushner survived the attack, but this
incident perhaps explains why he joined the Writers’ Union two years later
than Sosnora and Gorbovsky, even though his first book was published in
the same year as Sosnora’s Yanvarskii liven' ( January downpour).
In 1963, Sosnora and Gorbovsky were accepted into the Writers’ Union
on the same day. They were almost the first of their generation to join the
Leningrad branch, and at first glance it is not obvious why they, and after
them certain other poets, were accepted when so many of their peers were
not; especially as both poets had published only one collection of poetry
157 ‘Britanishsky Vladimir L'vovich’, in Samizdat Leningrada, p. 112.

158 Lidiya Ginzburg, Zapisnye knizhki. Vospminaniya. Esse, ed. by E. Polikashin (St
Petersburg: Iskusstvo – SPB, 2002), pp. 321–7.
159 Ibid., p. 323.
70 Chapter 1
prior to their acceptance. Some other young poets who emerged during
the Thaw were accepted into the Union, but from the archives it is not
clear exactly when.160 Of all these poets, Gorbovsky and Sosnora were
both accepted very early, and were particularly contentious candidates,
and their cases merit attention for the light that they shed on the Writers’
Union’s processes and policy.
Of the two, Gleb Gorbovsky was, on the face of it, the least likely
candidate for membership of the Union, being well-known among young
people in Leningrad for his protest poetry and songs and his dissolute
life.161 As we have seen, he attended the LITOs run by David Dar and Gleb
Semenov during the 1950s and 1960s, and these members of the Writers’
Union seem to have helped him with his career: in 1956 they arranged for
him to go away on a creative komandirovka – an expenses-paid trip,162 and
in 1957 he signed a contract with the publisher Sovetskii pisatel' for his
first book (which came out three years later).163 Like Britanishsky’s first col-
lection of two years earlier, the title of Gorbovsky’s first collection, Poiski
tepla (Searches for warmth) exemplifies the spirit of ‘searching’ which
characterised the Thaw; under the umbrella of the vague term ‘search’ even
unorthodox behaviour, it seems, might be rendered acceptable. Gorbovsky
was popular at readings held in the city, and it is likely that this popular-
ity made it hard for the Union to ignore him; acceptance, it was probably
thought, would help to ‘tame’ him.164
When Gorbovsky’s application was approved at a meeting of the
Secretariat in March 1963,165 Nikolay Braun (1902–1975) acknowledged
160 I have found reference to the following Leningrad poets of this generation joining
the Union before 1991: Leonid Ageev, Lev Kuklin, Aleksandr Gorodnitsky, Yury
Grekov, Nonna Slepakova, Lina Glebova, Vladimir Britanishsky, Emel'yanov, Galina
Galakhova, Natal'ya Galkina, Aleksey Lyubegin, A. Steganov, and Nina Koroleva.
161 Blue Lagoon Anthology, vol. 1, pp. 431 and 441. The most famous song was ‘Fonariki’.
Apparently, young people who knew it were often not aware it had been written by
Gorbovsky, but thought it was a traditional song.
163 ‘Stenogrammy zasedanii pravleniya 1963’, St Petersburg: f. 371; op. 1; d. 463.
164 Massie, The Living Mirror, p. 115; and Kushner, interview, 7 November 2002.
Gorbovsky’s chequered past in euphemistic language, referring again to

the vague and unspecified ‘searches’ of the Thaw, but argued that the time
had come to accept the poet into the ranks of the Union. Gorbovsky’s
career and poetic project was described in quasi-religious terms that put
the Union in the role of accepting a repentant sinner:
A poet who has come to poetry by a path that has not been entirely even – his path
was complicated and full of searching. On this path, naturally, the poet has not always
been successful. The latest poems by Gleb Gorbovsky are interesting, significant,
more finished than his early poems. In them, he strives for a deep understanding of
the poetic thoughts that he has created.166
A month later at the Board meeting his application came up for discus-
sion.167 In the stenographs of the Board meeting we discover that Gorbovsky
was recommended by the writers Vinokurov, Goryshin, and Bakhtin, and in
support of the application Bakhtin argued at this meeting that Gorbovsky’s
behaviour and his attitude towards poetry had changed dramatically over
the last few years; no one tried to argue otherwise, and Gorbovsky was
accepted.
Viktor Sosnora was only twenty-eight years old when he was admit-
ted into the Union. His work is influenced by the Futurist poets of the
1920s – as his patron Lilya Brik said, his poetic ‘fathers and mother’ are
Mayakovsky, Khlebnikov and Tsvetaeva.168 He was not as virulently anti-
Soviet as Gorbovsky, but neither was he a particularly exemplary Soviet
poet, as his work can be quite obscure. The strength of his application
undoubtedly lay in the powerful support it was given by Lilya Brik,169
166 Loc. cit.

167 ‘Stenogrammy zasedanii pravleniya 1963’, TsGALI St Petersburg: f. 371; op. 1; d.
463.
168 Lilya Brik, El'za Triolet, Neizdannaya perepiska (1921–1970), ed. V. V. Katanyan
(Moscow: Ellis Lak, 2000), p. 368.
169 In a letter to Triolet in 1962, Lilya Brik writes about her enthusiasm and support
for Sosnora and his work: ‘… it seems to me at the moment that better than all the
others is the poet Sosnora. His book is just about to come out. He is from Leningrad,
a metal worker, works in a factory – he is wonderful, a very subtle and very genuine
72 Chapter 1
Nikolay Aseev, and D. S. Likhachev. Sosnora’s work was apparently recom-

mended to Aseev by Boris Slutsky, who had read some poems in samiz-
dat, after which Aseev took it upon himself to help the young poet.170 He
enlisted support in Leningrad from Likhachev, one of the most influential
figures in the Leningrad literary intelligentsia at the time, and Likhachev
sponsored Sosnora’s application to the Union in 1963.171 Sosnora explains
that Aseev was later chosen as the internal reviewer for his first collection.
He was also a student in both Dar’s and Semenov’s LITOs in the 1950s, and
took part in many public readings in the city, which would have strength-
ened his application.
Sosnora always had enemies within the establishment, however. After
his first publication in the Moscow journal Literatura i zhizn' (Literature
and life) in March 1960, which was introduced by Aseev,172 he received
a great deal of negative attention at the Conference of Young Writers.
Someone called Sheiman criticised the amount of praise that Aseev had
heaped upon the young poet, and, pretending to be concerned for Sosnora’s
career, questioned whether Sosnora could live up to the praise he had
received while still so young.173 He talked for so long about Sosnora that it
must have been clear to listeners that his speech was a thinly-veiled attack,
possibly inspired by resentment at the attention and protection Sosnora
had received.
When, in 1963, Sosnora’s application to the Writers’ Union was dis-
cussed first at the Secretariat and then the Board of the Writers’ Union, it
became clear that he was a contentious figure who provoked heated debate.
person. He is 25. He is absolutely full of his poems and is writing all the time, always.
He reads them wonderfully, in his own style.’ Loc. cit.
170 Viktor Sosnora, interview with the author, tape recording, St Petersburg, 21 May
2003. See also ‘Pis'ma Nikolaya Aseeva k Viktoru Sosnore. Vstupitelnaya zametka i
publikatsiya Viktora Sosnory’ Zvezda 7 (1998), accessed at <http://magazines.russ.
ru/zvezda/1998/7/pisma.html> 7 August 2008.
171 ‘Stenogrammy zasedanii pravleniia 1963’, TsGALI St Petersburg, f. 371; op. 1;
d. 463.
172 ‘O mashine vremeni i stikhakh V. Sosnory’, Literatura i zhizn', 4 March 1960, p. 2.
173 ‘VII mezhoblastnaya konferentsiya molodykh avtorov. 9 March 1960’, TsGALI St
Petersburg: f. 371; op. 1; d. 412.
The principal complaints directed at him were that he had been spoilt by
excessive praise at a young age, and that he was too concerned with verse
form over content. When Braun opened the discussion of Sosnora’s appli-
cation at the Secretariat he began:
In this case there is no argument about whether or not Sosnora is talented – it is clear
to everyone that this is a good poet, engaged in a search, in work – the issue is that it
is precisely in his search, his work, that alas he often strays from what he is searching
for, subordinating his poems largely to form, contrivance and so on.174
The Secretariat decided that they should accept Sosnora, but tell him that
his poems should not prioritise form over content; but when the applica-
tion came up for discussion at the Board meeting in April,175 more concerns
were voiced. His application clearly caused unease.
Passages in Sosnora’s poems which caused offence or consternation
were quoted in the meeting: in one poem he had described workers on their
way to work in the morning as ‘black crabs’, and this was seen as insulting
and improper; in Vsadniki the line ‘russy – trusy’ (‘Russians are cowards’)
also caused offence. Prokof 'ev then recounted how at a reading recently,
Sosnora had read 16 poems instead of the 4 that he had been allotted time
for, and had selfishly turned the event into an evening of his poetry. The
application was almost shelved until such time as the Union felt he was
ready to join, but it was eventually decided that the best way to help Sosnora
correct his faults and improve his work was to accept him.176
This is almost the only instance in all the meetings of the Writers’
Union in the archive for 1953–75 when a poet is discussed for so long and
with such concern; clearly the combination of Sosnora’s talent, high literari-
ness, and independent-mindedness posed a serious problem to the Union.
174 ‘Stenogrammy zasedanii sekretariata 1963’, TsGALI St Petersburg: f. 371; op. 1;

d. 464.
d. 463.
176 Sosnora remembers that the discussion about his application went on late into the
evening, and says that he himself went home before it was concluded. Viktor Sosnora,
interview with the author, tape recording, St Petersburg, 21 May 2003.
74 Chapter 1
The officials of the Leningrad Branch of the Writers’ Union might, too,
have resented Sosnora’s sponsorship from Moscow. The only other poet
to arouse such perturbation among Leningrad writers during this period
was Iosif Brodsky, whose fate, as we shall see, was decided by the Writers’
Union’s lack of support for him. Had writers decided that Brodsky would
be best helped by admitting him to the Union, as they did Sosnora, his
career would have taken a different course.
The Gradual Freeze
Gorbovsky and Sosnora were admitted to the Writers’ Union in 1962.

Though the liberalisations of the Thaw perhaps peaked at this time, signs
that the political climate would soon change began to appear as well. Despite
the initial enthusiasm which greeted the publication of Solzhenitsyn’s Odin
den' Ivana Denisovicha, criticism of this work began to appear as early as
January 1963.177 In the same year, Evgeny Evtushenko was banned from
travelling abroad after the publication of his A Precocious Autobiography
in the West.178 Discussions at meetings of the Leningrad Branch of the
Writers’ Union reflect this tightening of control over literature, and show
how high-level policy was implemented at a local level.
It is clear that in 1963 the authorities made moves to rein in the poetry
movement. Two young poets who were already members of the Union,
Maya Borisova and Viktor Sosnora, were banned from reading at events
organised by the Bureau of Propaganda for six months after they read poems
at one recital that were judged to be unsuitable for public performance.179
177 B. Rubin, ‘Highlights of the 1962–1963 Thaw’, in Hayward, Crowley, Soviet Literature
in the Sixties, pp. 81–99 (p. 93).
178 E. Evtushenko, A Precocious Autobiography (London: Collins and Harvill Press,
1963).
179 ‘Stenogrammy zasedanii sekretariata 1963’, TsGALI St Petersburg: f. 371; op. 1;
d. 464.
Boris Vakhtin, who had organised the evening at which they read, was also
reprimanded. At the same meeting that decided on these punishments,
the Union Secretariat also took steps to tighten its control over readings
in the city; it was decided that Anatoly Chepurov of the metodsovet (an
advisory committee) should vet the contents of every such evening before
it was held. Later in the same year another complaint about the organisa-
tion of poetry readings arose at a meeting of the Secretariat, and a decision
was taken to strengthen control over the programmes of literary evenings
in the city.180 In December of the same year, it was decided there should
be a meeting of the leaders of all Leningrad literary groups, to give them
guidance in their work, and allocate to each a group of writers selected
from the Board; the purpose of this group was given as ‘for the purposes
of help and control.’181
Publishing work became more problematic than ever for young poets
when the atmosphere in the USSR grew politically more conservative
again.182 When, in 1963, the Secretariat met to review the latest edition
of Molodoi Leningrad before it was approved for publication, many com-
ments made about the collection illustrate the kinds of difficulties young
writers faced.183 One of the main criticisms of the poems included in the
collection was that they were obscure. Oleg Shestinsky (1929–2009) said
of the work of Gorbovsky, Ageev, and Kushner, ‘Something about it is not
clear; there is, of course, a subtext, but I don’t sense, I don’t feel any real life
behind it.’ He illustrated his point by quoting four lines from Kushner’s
poem ‘Zhuravl'’ (‘The crane’):
180 Loc. cit.

181 Loc. cit.
182 It was difficult for most writers, even when established, to publish their work. Efim
Etkind has listed thirteen different bodies and officials in the Soviet publishing process
who were in a position to obstruct the publication of a book: Efim Etkind, Zapiski
nezagovorshchika (London: Overseas Publications Interchange, 1977), p. 319.
183 ‘Stenogrammy zasedanii sekretariata 1963’, TsGALI St Petersburg, f. 371; op. 1;
d. 464.
76 Chapter 1
Скажи мне, что крыльями машет

В тебе и жаждет высоты?
Тогда душа моя запляшет
По-журавлиному, как ты …
Tell me, what is it in you that beats your wings/ and thirsts for height?/ Then my
soul will start to dance,/ crane-like, like you.
He commented, ‘here the idea is so difficult to discover, so slippery, that

it ends up being somehow unstable, intangible.’ For the orthodox and
conservative Shestinsky, the poems are too ‘poetic’ and lack the ‘objective
sense of reality’ that Socialist Realism demanded. Avramenko also criticised
Kushner for having too narrow a sphere of observation, a criticism that
became almost standard for Kushner during the 1960s; Socialist Realism
was supposed to take in a wide breadth of themes and subjects which
reflected the scale of the great projects of the USSR, and Kushner’s quiet
and meditative lyric persona was often seen to be inadequate for Soviet
literature in this respect.
German Plisetsky’s (1931–1993) poem ‘Filarmoniya’ (‘The philhar-
monic’) provoked more direct criticism as an unacceptable portrayal of Soviet
society. Stanzas from the offending poem were read at the meeting:
Одинокие женщины ходят в концерты

Как в соборы ходили – молиться.
Эти белые лица в партере, как в церкви,
Как в минуты любви – обнаженные лица.
И еще туда ходят рыцари долга,

В гардеробе снимают доспехи,
И ничтожными кажутся ненадолго
Их большие дневные успехи.
Среди буйных голов, на ладони упавших,

Среди душ, превратившихся в уши,
Узнаю Прометеев, от службы уставших,
И Джульетт, обращенных в старушек …184
Lonely women go to concerts/ as they used to go to church – to pray./ These white
faces in the stalls, as in church,/ as in the moments of love, are faces exposed.// Knights
of duty go there as well,/ take off their armour in the cloakroom,/ and just for a while
their great daytime successes seem unimportant.// Among luxuriant heads that have
fallen on palms,/ among souls that have turned into ears,/ I recognise Prometheuses,
tired from service,/ and Juliets turned into old women.
Avramenko indignantly claimed the poem shows ‘dead-endedness’ (bez-

yskhodnost' ) and desolation (opustoshennost' ), and said that it could not be
included. He was, in fact, adamant that the almanac could not be published
in its present form; Braun cautioned, however, that not to publish it would
jeopardise its future publication. In the event, the almanac seems not to
have come out that year, although its production continued in subsequent
years as before.185 It would appear that, in the changing political climate of
1963, there was a clash between poets who submitted work in the style that
had been acceptable during the Thaw and editors who were not as prepared
to take risks and try to publish the kinds of politically daring works which
they had accepted just a year earlier.
One episode became the most obvious and significant indication in
Leningrad at the time that the Thaw had come to an end and the USSR was
freezing over again politically; this was the notorious trial and sentence to
five years’ physical labour of Iosif Brodsky. For people in the West as well
as in the USSR, it was clear from this episode that the political climate in
Moscow had changed. Material from the archives of the Writers’ Union
in Leningrad demonstrates how the affair was allowed to develop because
184 The full text of this poem and a translation can be found in Gerald S. Smith,
Contemporary Russian Poetry (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), pp. 60–1.
185 I have been unable to find the almanac anywhere in British libraries; I am grateful
to Stanislav Savitsky and Kirill Alekseev for searching on my behalf in St Petersburg
libraries, and finding that it does not exist for that year.
78 Chapter 1
of the attitude that the organisation took towards the young poet. The
trouble began when Brodsky read at the House of Writers one evening,
and many people attacked his poetry.186 Then, on 29 November, an article
was published in the newspaper Vechernii Leningrad (Evening Leningrad ),
entitled ‘Okololiteraturnyi truten'’ (‘A drone of the literary fringe’) which
claimed that Brodsky was a parasite on Soviet society, and was signed by
Lerner, Medvedev and Ionin.187 Lerner was the chief instigator of the trouble
made for Brodsky; he was a former captain in the KGB, and a member of a
Narodnaya druzhina – a voluntary militia patrol which assisted the police
in maintaining order and combating hooliganism. He is known to have
sabotaged a contract for some work which Brodsky had with the publishing
house Khudozhestvennaya literatura (Artistic literature) in Moscow.188
The article and the ‘Brodsky problem’ were discussed at a meeting
of the Secretariat of the Writers’ Union on 17 December 1963 to which
Lerner was invited.189 Lerner read out a letter from the Prosecutor of the
Dzerzhinsky region of Leningrad where Brodsky lived, demanding that
the young poet be tried in a public court of law. He then gave a description
of Brodsky’s character furnished with extracts from Brodsky’s diary, let-
ters addressed to him, and from a letter Brodsky had sent to the editor of
Vechernii Leningrad. The subsequent discussion was not stenographed, but
many of the writers present are listed as having spoken: Prokof 'ev, Nikolai
Braun, Petr Kapitsa (1909–1998), Vladimir Dmitrievsky (1908–1978),
Chepurov, Vasily Kukushkin (1908–?), Vsevolod Azarov (1913–1990),
Vladimir Abramkin (1910–1968), Nikolai Brykin (1895–1979), Fedorenko,
Daniil Granin (b. 1919), Askol'd Sheikin (b. 1924), Avraam Novikov (1921–
2001), Podzemsky, Khodza, and Shestinsky. After the debate it was unani-
mously decided that the Writers’ Union should:
186 Georgy Stukov [Gleb Struve], ‘Poet –“Tuneyadets” – Iosif Brodsky’, in Iosif Brodsky,
Stikhotvoreniya i poemy (New York: Inter-Language Literary Associates, 1965),
pp. 5–15 (p. 7).
188 Yakov Gordin, ‘Delo Brodskogo’, Neva 2 (1989), 134–66 (p. 146).
1. Categorically agree with the opinion of the public prosecutor that

Brodsky should be brought to trial in a public court. Bearing in
mind the anti-Soviet statements made by Brodsky and some of
his like-minded associates, to request that the prosecutor initiate
a criminal prosecution against Brodsky and his ‘friends’.
2. Request that the Komsomol, together with the Leningrad Branch
of the Writers’ Union, acquaint themselves with the activities of
the Poets’ Cafe.
3. Consider the publication of the article ‘Okololiteraturnyi truten'’
by Vechernii Leningrad timely and correct.
4. Instruct N. L. Braun, V. V. Toropygin, A. P. El'yashevich, and
O. N. Shestinsky to appear at the public trial.190
It is clear that Brodsky was not only attacked, but also framed, although it
is not evident why this happened; we do not know whether or not Lerner
acted out of his own conviction, or because he had been ‘asked’ by the
authorities to do so.
In December 1963 Brodsky went into the Kashchenko Psychiatric
Hospital in Moscow to escape attention in Leningrad. He returned to
Leningrad just after New Year, however, because of complications in a love
affair,191 and on 8 January Vechernii Leningrad published its second article
about him, entitled ‘Tuneyadtsam ne mesto v nashem gorode’ (‘No place for
parasites in our city’). At this time, Gordin explains, Brodsky’s labour record
(trudovaya kniga) had been taken from him by the authorities so that it was
impossible for him to obtain work; again, this points to the fact that Brodsky
was framed.192 On 13 February he was arrested, and on 18 February he was
tried for the first time. The journalist and member of the Writers’ Union in
Moscow Frida Vigdorova came to Leningrad especially to make a transcript
of this trial, and also recorded the one that followed.193 After the first trial
190 Loc. cit.

191 Bobyshev, Ya zdes', pp. 362–3.
192 Gordin, Delo Brodskogo, p. 146.
193 These transcripts were soon sent to the West by Vigdorova, and appeared in vari-
ous publications, causing an international scandal, including: ‘The Trial of Joseph
80 Chapter 1
Brodsky was incarcerated in the Strelka Psychiatric Hospital where intensive

tests were carried out on him to determine whether or not his ‘recurrent
illness’ meant that he was not able to hold down a regular, full-time job. At
the second trial in March it was announced that Brodsky did suffer from a
long-term illness, but that this did not render him unfit for work.
The second trial was a profoundly dispiriting experience for the intel-
lectuals who tried to reason with the judge and the prosecution in their
defence of Brodsky. Despite the protests of many major literary figures
from the Leningrad and Moscow Branches of the Writers’ Union, Lerner’s
attack on Brodsky was successful.194 The judge ruled that Brodsky be sent ‘far
away’ to a place where he would be made to carry out physical work for five
years. He was sent to Norinskaya in the Arkhangelsk Oblast. Intellectuals
protested against the ruling and signed letters petitioning for his release.
These had no discernible effect, and only served to blacklist the signatories
(podpischiki), now deemed untrustworthy.195
The meetings held in the Writers’ Union before the trial seem to have
been open to only a select group of writers who could be trusted to sup-
port the Party line on Brodsky’s case. At the trial, other members of the
Union, notably Efim Etkind, Vladimir Admoni and Natal'ya Grudinina
from the translation department, spoke out in Brodsky’s defence, and for
this they were reprimanded by the Union afterwards. At a Board meeting
of the Writers’ Union in March 1964, a discussion entitled ‘Conclusions of
the literary year’ touched upon the subject of Brodsky’s conviction more
than once.196 In his opening address Prokof 'ev criticised the translators for
defending Brodsky:
Brodsky’, The New Leader, 31 August 1964, pp. 6–17; ‘Stenograficheskii otchet prot-
sessa Brodskogo’, Vozdushnye puti 4 (1965), 279–303; and ‘Trial of a Young Poet’,
Encounter 9 (1964), 84–91. BBC Radio dramatised the trial, and Radio Free Europe
broadcast the news widely.
194 Gordin, Delo Brodskogo, p. 146.
195 Yakov Gordin, interview with the author, tape recording, St Petersburg, 22 November
2002.
op. 1; d. 476.
And the rabid defence of the parasite Brodsky at his trial by Grudinina, Admoni
and Etkind, a defence that was contrary to the opinion of the writers’ society, calls
into question the ideological maturity of several writers.
He moved on from the issue of Brodsky’s trial and talked about the suc-
cesses of some young writers and other positive results from the previous
year’s work, but when David Dar took the floor to speak he insistently
returned to the subject. Long before the newspaper article and the trial,
Dar said, some writers had thought that they should invite Brodsky to
the Union to talk to him, but nothing was done. At the last meeting of
the Committee for Work with Young Writers the question of what to do
about Brodsky had come up again. Dar once again advocated talking to
him, but other writers assumed that Brodsky would not come to talk to ‘the
establishment’, and again, nothing was done. Nobody had been prepared
to talk to Brodsky, Dar maintained, and that is why the affair had blown
up into the fiasco that it did.
When the article appeared in the press, Dar had wanted to discuss
the question at the Committee again, but Granin categorically forbade its
mention. Dar expressed anger that falsifications had been made in court
in the name of the Committee for Work with Young Writers, which were
used to argue against the telegrams that prominent Moscow writers Korney
Chukovsky (1882–1969) and Samuil Marshak (1887–1964) sent in support
of Brodsky. He spoke out strongly against the suggestion by the heads of the
Union that it was better to toe the line than to tell the truth in court:
At the trial people who were acting as witnesses, who had signed a declaration that
they would tell the truth, did so, and then this is classified as ‘rabid defence.’
What? Were the witnesses supposed to lie? In your opinion were they supposed
to say what Prokof 'ev thinks, and not the truth that the court demanded and that
they were obliged to tell?
Despite Prokof 'ev’s interruptions and objections, Dar continued to talk

about Brodsky. He finished his speech with the acknowledgement that he,
as much as any other writer, was responsible for what had happened. In
response, Prokof 'ev forbade all other writers from mentioning the trial at
the meeting, but he was not obeyed.
82 Chapter 1
A woman called Venetskaya spoke in support of the conduct of the

translators, and suggested that it was shameful for the Union to criticise
such respected figures as Professor Admoni, and Efim Etkind. She and
others argued that the Union’s role in such a situation should be to sup-
port young writers and to help them correct mistakes, not to push young
people to the point where they would do or say stupid things and get into
trouble. Her point highlighted the recent changes in the Union’s attitude
towards young writers. Overall, the meeting made apparent the gulf which
existed between the liberal members of the organisation and the ‘bosses’
of Leningrad literature.
In this chapter we have seen that, in the period of the Khrushchev
Thaw, the Writers’ Union’s policy to attract young people to its ranks was,
to some degree, successful. This success was largely due to the efforts of
liberal individuals, notably Gleb Semenov, who worked hard to put into
practice Union policies that might otherwise have remained only as lip-
service to an idea which conservative elements of the Union never wanted
to act upon. Without the liberalisation of the Thaw in society, such indi-
viduals would never have been in a position to effect the changes in policy
towards young writers as they did.
In spite of this shift in the balance of power in the Union towards
the liberals, at the level of the Board and Secretariat the attitude towards
poetry and young people seems to have changed little: discussions rarely pay
attention to actual texts; when these are mentioned, their critical appraisal
is couched in vague, formulaic and stereotyped terms. In the LITOs and
groups for young people in the city, by contrast, a handful of teachers
who were genuinely enthusiastic about literature nurtured a different,
more literary attitude towards poetry in their students. Clashes between
these two attitudes were inevitable. When the Union began to reverse
its liberalising trend, some young people who were not content to accept
the change in the authorities’ attitude towards them began to bypass the
Union by creating their own sphere of literature which was not subject to
official approval.
Chapter 2
After the Thaw, 1965–1975
Signs that the Thaw had come to an End
On 12 October 1964 Nikita Khrushchev was ousted from his posts of First
Secretary and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. In retro-
spect, his removal from office has become synonymous with the end of the
Thaw, but this change at the highest level of the country’s political life did
not immediately filter down to affect lower-level policy, such as that gov-
erning literary politics in Leningrad. In the latter half of the 1960s, how-
ever, several significant events in Moscow and Leningrad, which received
high-profile attention in the USSR and the West, gave indications that the
political atmosphere in the USSR was growing more conservative.
A most unwelcome development in the 1960s was a return to the
Stalinist practice of putting writers on trial. This began with the trial of
Iosif Brodsky in Leningrad in 1964, an event which warned young, amateur
writers that a literary, bohemian lifestyle would no longer be tolerated by
the authorities. Both young, amateur writers and members of the Writers’
Union wrote letters to the authorities protesting at Brodsky’s treatment,
and copies of the transcript of his trial which Frida Vigdorova had made
were reproduced and circulated in samizdat.1 The following year, in 1965,
another case of repressive measures taken against writers gained notoriety
in the USSR and abroad, when Andrey Sinyavsky and Yuly Daniel' were
arrested under statute 70 of the criminal code of the USSR, for producing
1 Vyacheslav Dolinin was one person involved in the distribution of the trial tran-
script in samizdat. Vyacheslav Dolinin, interview with the author, tape recording,
St Petersburg, 21 November 2002.
84 Chapter 2
anti-Soviet propaganda.2 These arrests also served as a warning to writers:

now there was to be little tolerance of tamizdat publishing. After Sinyavsky
and Daniel' had been arrested, a now-famous protest was held at the monu-
ment to Pushkin in Moscow, which has, in retrospect, been identified as
the beginning of the human rights movement in the USSR.3 Sinyavsky
and Daniel' were both found guilty at their trial and sent to the GULag,
which was a damning result for sympathisers who had protested against
the proceedings. Repercussions from the affair were serious as well. Yury
Galanskov and Aleksandr Ginzburg were tried two years later for having
produced and circulated the ‘White Book’ wherein details of and docu-
ments pertaining to the case against Sinyavsky and Daniel' were collected.4
They too were sent to the GULag as punishment.
These actions against writers seemed to bode ill for the political direc-
tion of the Soviet leadership in the later 1960s, but a more significant and
horrifying event that confirmed the worst fears of many Soviet citizens and
especially the intelligentsia at this time was undoubtedly the Soviet invasion
of Prague on 21 August 1968. The crude and heavy-handed crushing of the
Prague Spring was devastating evidence for many liberal-minded Russians
that the liberalisation of culture, and especially of literary culture, which
had occurred during the Thaw was over; that ‘Socialism with a human face’
was not going to be given a chance; and that the future held only a return
to harsher totalitarian rule.
2 Belaya kniga o dele Sinyavskogo i Danielya (Moscow, 1966; copyright Frankfurt on

Main: Posev Verlag, 1967), p. 167. Transcripts of the trial and documents relating
to it were translated into English and published as On Trial. The Case of Sinyavsky
(Tertz) and Daniel (Arzhak), ed. by Leopold Labedz and Max Hayward (London:
Collins and Harvill Press, 1967).
3 For years afterwards, meetings on the anniversary of the first meeting at the Pushkin
monument served as a focus for the Human Rights movement. This is referred to in
Peter Reddaway, ed., Uncensored Russia. The Human Rights Movement in the Soviet
Union (London: Jonathan Cape, 1972), p. 71.
4 Belaya kniga o dele Sinyavskogo i Danielya. Documents relating to the trial of Ginzburg
and Galanskov and its aftermath were published in Abraham Brumberg, ed., In Quest
of Justice (London: Pall Mall Press, 1970), pp. 93–182.
Over the late 1960s and 1970s, writers continued to experience attacks
and arrests. The high-profile writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn experienced the
move towards conservatism which came at the end of the Thaw: the gradual
shift in his fortunes in the USSR, now famous and well-documented,
progressed at the same pace as general changes in the literary world which
affected run-of-the-mill writers and everyday literary policy.5 His problems
began in 1965, when the manuscript of V kruge pervom (The first circle)
was seized after it had been refused publication. Slowly, his position as a
Soviet writer was eroded, worsening after 1968 and culminating, in 1974,
with his forcible expulsion from the USSR. By that time it had become
clear that the Soviet regime would no longer countenance such criticisms
and independent opinions as Solzhenitsyn had dared to voice during the
Thaw. In Leningrad there was no figure equivalent to Solzhenitsyn, and
there were fewer specifically literary arrests and trials than in Moscow, but
in 1974, Mikhail Kheifets and Vladimir Maramzin were arrested in con-
nection with compiling and producing a commentary on a collection of
the work of Iosif Brodsky, by then in emigration.6 The samizdat collection
had not been completed, and was not in wide circulation, so the arrests,
trials, and sentence appeared particularly harsh: Kheifets was sentenced
to four years in a strict regime camp and two in exile; Maramzin to a five-
year suspended sentence.
In the West, knowledge and understanding of Soviet unofficial litera-
ture was largely confined to its most widely documented and high-profile
cases involving writers such as Solzhenitsyn. This was partly because news
of writers’ arrests, trials and punishments in some cases made the headlines
of newspapers and grabbed the attention of the public. Another reason
was that human rights organisations were very active in disseminating news
from the USSR, and publicised the news of writers’ arrests; funding from
the CIA probably helped to facilitate their activities in some instances.
5 For information on Solzhenitsyn’s career in the USSR see Solzhenitsyn. A Documentary

Record, ed. by Leopold Labedz (London: Allen Lane, 1970).
6 Details of the Kheifets and Maramzin arrests were published in A Chronicle of Human
Rights in the USSR (New York: Khronika Press) over several issues in 1974. See
especially nos. 11/12 (pp. 15–18), and 13 (p. 5).
86 Chapter 2
The strong influence of human rights organisations in the press coverage of

unofficial literature led to a persistent association of politics and unofficial
literature. In turn, this created the misleading impression that much, if not
all unofficial literature was in some way ‘dissident’, and constituted a protest
against the Soviet regime. There were commentators, such as Sidney Monas,
who acknowledged a division of unofficial writers into more political and
literary camps,7 but even though he identified Brodsky as a ‘literary’ unof-
ficial writer, the majority of references to Brodsky in the West were to his
trial and not his poetry, and portrayed Brodsky as being further from the
Soviet literary establishment than was actually the case.
In fact, while many young writers might not have been supporters
of Soviet power, there is little evidence in their work to suggest that they
saw literature as a vehicle for their political opinions. This was especially
the case in Leningrad, where, unlike Moscow, there was no human rights
movement and literature was not as closely associated with politics.8 In
Leningrad, most young writers were engaged in struggling not with the
political regime as such, but with the inertia and conservatism of the liter-
ary process in the USSR.
Young Poets and the Official Literary World after the Thaw
The changes in high-level policy towards young writers and the increasing
conservatism in literature combined to bring about gradual changes to the
literary process in Leningrad. Already in the mid-1960s, when poets of the
younger generation began to take part in the literary activities of Leningrad,
the parameters of what was acceptable to the establishment in terms of
7 Sidney Monas, ‘Engineers or Martyrs: Dissent and the Intelligentsia’, in In Quest of

Justice, pp. 15–38.
8 In Moscow the poets Vladimir Batshev and Natal'ya Gorbanevskaya, for example,
were associated with the human rights movement.
poetry were palpably narrower than ten years earlier; this political climate
worsened over the coming years. Some idea of the mood of the Leningrad
Branch of the Writers’ Union in the mid-1960s is indicated by comments
made at the annual discussion ‘Conclusions of the literary year’, held at the
Leningrad Branch of the Writers’ Union at the end of 1964.9
Nikolay Braun opened the meeting on a positive note by naming suc-
cess stories among young poets who were already members of the Union,10
and those who looked set to become such in the near future.11 The tone
changed, somewhat, when he went on to communicate to the meeting
instructions given out at a recent meeting in Moscow at which Party and
Government leaders had met with artistic and literary figures. The political
authorities, he said, had expressed concern over the formalist tendencies
of various representatives of Soviet poetry; what he wanted to consider
at this meeting was the presence of these tendencies in Leningrad poetry.
Without mentioning any names, he outlined the pitfalls that writers might
fall into in the course of their creative work:
A striving for innovation, searches for something new are characteristic of our young
people, these are natural and deserve every kind of approval. Without a search for
the new, there is no art. But there are different kinds of searches. They can reveal
a new, deeper vision of the world … But they can be empty exercises in formalistic
trickery – and then they impoverish art …
When, after these comments, Braun mentioned that Viktor Sosnora and
Maya Borisova had been criticised recently for poems that they had read in
public, he seemed to be suggesting that they had fallen prey to the tempta-
tion of ‘form for form’s sake’.
A similar warning note was sounded in April 1965, when at a Board
meeting held to discuss the first four editions of the journal Zvezda for
that year, V. Orlov claimed that a weakness in many poems was empty,

op. 1; d. 476.
10 Among these he included Leonid Ageev, Nina Koroleva, and Aleksandr Kushner.
11 Among these he included Tat'yana Galushko, Nonna Slepakova, Irina Malyarova,
Vasily Betaki, and Aleksandr Gorodnitsky.
88 Chapter 2
meaningless phrases dressed up with fine-sounding rhetoric or lyricism.

He also found fault with what he called ‘mendacious polysemy’ (lozhnaya
mnogoznachimost' ): when poems appeared to contain deep thought, but
were actually no more than the banal repetition of basic and clichéd truisms.
His criticisms betray an emphasis on meaning over form, and a disparage-
ment of vague or ambiguous language. They indicate that, in future, only
simple and unsophisticated poetry would qualify for the Writers’ Union
stamp of approval. This policy became explicit when he gave his assess-
ment of the direction in which Soviet poetry should develop: ‘Personally
it seems to me that the time has come now when we ought to demand
simplicity in poetry.’
At the Fourth All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers held in 1967,
Mikhail Dudin gave more indications of the way that Soviet poetry ought
to progress in the near future.12 In particular he devoted much attention to
the need for poetry to keep alive the memory of the Great Patriotic War:
Mikhail Lukonin is right when he says that during the war he acquired enough mate-
rial and richness of experience to last him, as a poet, his whole life. Sometimes the
poets of my generation are groundlessly accused of a particular passion for the war
theme. But the thing is, for us the war is not an aim in itself in our creative work; it
is just that on the crimson horizon of the war we saw the human soul more clearly,
laid bare.13
Lukonin (1918–1976) had been criticised in the years immediately after the
war for placing too much emphasis on his memory of it. Here, in the late
1960s, we can see the beginnings of what Katharine Hodgson terms the
‘cult of commemoration’, when poems about the war were actively encour-
aged: Dudin gave the theme more approbation in 1967 than it received in
the early 1950s.14 With regard to verse form, Dudin advocated a conserva-
tive line. Asking frankly ‘How should we write poetry – in free verse or in
12 Mikhail Dudin, ‘O sovetskoi poezii’, in Chetvertyi vsesoyuznyi s''ezd sovetskikh pisatelei

(Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel', 1968), pp. 25–33 (p. 29).
13 Loc. cit.
14 Katharine Hodgson, Written with the Bayonet. Soviet Russian Poetry of World War
Two (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1996), p. 259.
rhymed iambic pentameter?’,15 he answered that iambic pentameter should

not be narrowly understood as only parody or imitation of Pushkin,16 and
imitations of Tsvetaeva’s or Severyanin’s verse should not always be labelled
innovative. This was as much as to say that the stigma of conservatism and
banality which had become attached to the most canonical of Stalinist
Socialist Realist metres should be lifted.
Inertia and conservatism are again reflected in Dudin’s retrospective
appraisal of the poetry ‘boom’ of the Thaw. While acknowledging that some
of the poetry produced by the new, younger generation of Soviet poets
during the 1960s was talented, his prevailing tone was cautionary: ‘Not
all of this stormy flood of young poetry proved genuine.’17 Overall, this
Congress made it clear that poetry should keep in line with Soviet politics,
and that the kinds of leniency and generosity which had characterised the
Thaw could no longer be expected from the literary authorities.
The running of the Writers’ Union underwent some changes during
the second half of the 1960s: it is obvious from stenographs and minutes
of the meetings of its Board and the Secretariat that the balance of power
shifted away from the large body of the Board, where it had lain during the
Thaw, to the elect group of the Secretariat. In particular, it is worth noting
that the process of admissions to the Union ceased to be a matter for the
Board in 1968.18 The result of these changes was that the Union became
more tightly controlled, and was structured in such a way that rank-and-file
members of the Union had little say in the running of the organisation.
At the same time as conservatism crept back into the bodies governing
literature in the USSR and their policies, the attitude towards young poets
and their activities again grew suspicious. In the second half of the 1960s,
students continued to write poetry and produce their own journals and
broadsheets in the spirit that had characterised the Thaw, but they were
rarely indulged by the authorities to the same extent as their predecessors,
15 Dudin, ‘O sovetskoi poezii’, p. 33.

16 It should be noted that Pushkin wrote relatively little in iambic pentameter, favour-
ing iambic tetrameter above all.
17 Dudin, ‘O sovetskoi poezii’, p. 33.
90 Chapter 2
and very often their literary activities led quickly to recriminations or even
criminal proceedings. A student journal Al'manakh (Almanac), set up at
the Herzen Pedagogical Institute in 1965, was suppressed in 1966,19 and,
at the Technical Institute, the paper Kolokol (The bell ) ended with the
arrests of the editors and authors, who were sentenced to various terms of
imprisonment.20 Sazhin describes how Vita, a wall-newspaper produced
after Al'manakh, was taken down after only three days.
There was a new student publication in 1966, produced at the
Philological Faculty of the Leningrad State University, which was enti-
tled Zven'ya (Links).21 Viktor Krivulin has explained that the journal was
produced under the auspices of the authorities and was intended for official
publication, but even its official endorsement did not prevent its being
closed down after only two issues were produced in manuscript form.22
Such official control over literary activities is characteristic of the authori-
ties’ increasing concern to monitor closely the literary culture in Leningrad
in the late 1960s; gradually, peripheral literary activity was brought under
the wing of the literary and political authorities so that it could be more
closely supervised.
The most significant of the measures taken to curb the poetry move-
ment at this point was the increasing control that was exercised over the
LITOs. The number of independent LITOs had apparently decreased by the
late 1960s, and the ‘Narvskaya zastava’ was one of the few that remained.23
The Writers’ Union withdrew its sponsorship of most LITOs in factories,
institutes and other institutions, when a policy was introduced in 1966 or
19 Valery Sazhin, ‘Samizdat v LGPI. Gazeta “Vita”’, in Samizdat, pp. 70–3 (p. 70).
20 Valery Ronkin, ‘Kolokol’, in Samizdat, pp. 66–70.
21 Zven'ya was edited by Vladimir Novoselov and included work by Viktor Krivulin,
Viktor Toporov, Mikhail Gurevich [who later took the pseudonym Yasnov], and
Sergey Stratanovsky. Vyacheslav Dolinin and Dmitry Severyukhin, Preodolenie
nemoty. Leningradskii samizdat v kontekste nezavisimogo kul'turnogo dvizheniya
1953–91 (St Petersburg: Izdatel'stvo imeni N. I. Novikova, 2003), pp. 42–3.
23 Boris Taigin, ‘Iz dnevnika Borisa Taigina’, Pchela 32 (2001), 65–71 (pp. 68–9), also
at <http://www.pchela.ru /podshiv/32/nocomm.htm>
1967 that aimed to liquidate fractionalisation (gruppovshchina) in literature.

Instead of endorsing numerous groups, the Union created central LITOs
for prose writers, poets, critics, dramatists and so forth.24 Gleb Semenov
ran the central LITO for poets, which had been set up in 1968. Thus, while
the idea of literary groups for young people was not abandoned completely,
the system was centralised. This represented a reversal of the policy on
work with young writers in Leningrad that had been introduced in 1953
to decentralise the LITOs and encourage their proliferation.25 When the
LITOs became centralised, and therefore more tightly controlled, many
young writers responded by beginning to host alternative, private salons,
like the one held at Kuz'minsky’s flat which began at the end of the 1960s,26
and to form unofficial groups, such as the Malaya sadovaya poets, who will
be described below.
When control was tightened over the officially-run LITOs, the dis-
tance grew between them and the unofficial groups and salons that poets
organised; in other words, for the younger generation there opened up a
more pronounced division between official and unofficial literary activity.
Many young Leningrad poets gravitated towards the latter, because they
had become disaffected and disillusioned with the official literary process.
This shift happened for a number of reasons. For one, poets were disap-
pointed in the USSR after the invasion of Prague, and for them, official
literature was tainted by its association with the state. For another, the
younger generation had emerged after the ‘youth literature’ of the Thaw,
and suffered from this. It took considerable time to develop a career as
a writer, and the older, Thaw generation was still being admitted to the
24 In the transcript of a discussion concerning a report that was apparently intended for
an audience in Moscow, a person called Rakhmanov asked if it would be stated in the
report that in Leningrad the Writers’ Union had no problem with ‘gruppovshchina’
(fractionalisation) or ‘skloka’ (squabbling). ‘Zasedaniya pravleniya 1967’, TsGALI
St Petersburg: f. 371; op. 1; d. 516.
25 ‘Protokoly i stenogrammy zasedanii sekretariata, 1953’, TsGALI St Petersburg: f. 371;
op. 1; d. 186.
26 Boris Ivanov, ‘Evolyutsiya literaturnykh dvizhenii v pyatidesyatye–vos'midesyatye
gody. (Tezisy)’, in ILNL, pp. 17–28 (p. 25).
92 Chapter 2
Union in the 1970s. At this time, the generation of younger poets should
have been the new, young writers of the day (born mostly 1944–7), but
instead they found themselves overshadowed by their older counterparts
who were still finally achieving status as official writers.27
Official policy also reflected a reluctance to make much effort with
young writers, probably because there was no longer the impetus from
Moscow to bring new poets into Soviet literature. The policies of the Thaw
period had been successful, and many poets had been discovered and nur-
tured. Now, the Union could grow conservative and complacent again.
Younger poets were left without opportunities to publish, stranded in
LITOs and Conferences of Young Writers that seemed to offer no career
path any more. By the time they reached their thirties, in the mid-1970s,
they had not managed to make names for themselves or publish, and were
not ready to try to become professional writers.
We find indications that the position of young writers had once more
begun to concern some people in the stenographs of Writers’ Union Board
meetings as early as 1967. After the Conference of Young Writers that year,
liberal writers who worked and sympathised with young writers called for
more opportunities for them to publish. This suggests that the problems
that had existed before the Thaw had resurfaced. At a meeting held after
the conference, Vera Ketlinskaya (1906–1976) announced, ‘What worries
me more than anything else is that, without publication, young people
are not progressing.’28 She described the meagre opportunities for young
writers to publish in Leningrad: the newspapers printed only well-known
poets; the almanac Molodoi Leningrad had been considerably shortened;
and the ‘thick’ journals Neva and Zvezda had planned their issues for the
entire forthcoming year and would not accept any other work. Even the
small-scale collections of young writers’ work which had been published
after conferences in the past were no longer produced.
27 Between 1965 and 1972 Aleksandr Kushner, Leonid Ageev, Reid Grachev, Nonna
Slepakova, Oleg Tarutin, Nina Al'tovskaya, and Aleksandr Gorodnitsky were all
admitted to the Writers’ Union.
28 ‘Stenogrammy zasedanii pravleniya 1967’, TsGALI St Petersburg: f. 371; op. 1; d.
516.
This situation was a problem principally for younger writers, but mem-
bers of the Thaw generation (born 1935–40) who had begun late or were
interrupted in their literary careers also now had trouble publishing their
poetry officially and making a name for themselves. Iosif Brodsky was in
this position. In 1965–6 it seemed that he would succeed in ‘breaking
through’ into official literature ( probit'sya is the term usually used in Soviet
parlance) despite having fallen foul of the authorities in the past: on his
return from internal exile in 1965 he was invited to submit a manuscript to
Sovetskii pisatel' to be considered for publication.29 (This olive branch was
clearly an attempt to mollify the liberals in the USSR and abroad who had
protested at Brodsky’s prosecution and punishment.) Drawing on archival
sources, Anna Uspenskaya describes how he submitted a collection entitled
Zimnyaya pochta (Winter post), from which two poems were published in
Molodoi Leningrad in 1966, and two in Den' poezii in 1967. The collection
was reviewed internally by various writers, and the reviews were positive
and recommended publication.30
Zimnyaya pochta was never published, however, for it fell victim to
the politics of the time. In 1967, the Six-Day War between Israel and the
Arab allies of the USSR gave unofficial sanction to anti-Semitism in official
institutions and Soviet life (this prejudice was prevalent in the USSR during
the fiasco of the Doctors’ Plot but had eased after the death of Stalin). In
this spirit, a ‘chauvinistic, quasi-fascist’ group called ‘Rossiya’ (‘Russia’)
denounced an evening of poetry in which Brodsky took part (described
below), and apparently brought about the cancellation of contracts to pub-
lish work by Brodsky, Maya Danini, and Yakov Gordin.31 The manuscript
was reviewed again after that event by the conservative Avramenko, and
he judged it to be not worthy of attention. It was returned to its author.
Although some writers tried to argue the case for Brodsky’s publication, it
29 Anna Uspenskaya, ‘O pervom neopublikovannom sbornike stikhov Brodskogo’, in

Iosif Brodsky i mir. Metafizika, antichnost', sovremennost', compiled by Ya. Gordin
and ed. by I. Meraveva (St Petersburg: Zvezda, 2000), pp. 330–35.
30 Uspenskaya gives her sources as documents in TsGALI St Petersburg: f. 371; op. 1;
d. 516; and f. 344; op. 1; d. 589: ‘O pervom neopublikovannom sbornike’, p. 331.
31 Reddaway, Uncensored Russia, pp. 430–31.
94 Chapter 2
was to no avail, and Brodsky’s chance to publish a collection slipped by.32

Brodsky’s friend and fellow ‘Akhmatova orphan’ Anatoly Naiman may have
suffered the same prejudice in January 1969, when his application to join
the Union was rejected for the second time (he had previously applied as a
poet; now he tried to be accepted as a translator.)33 Despite recommenda-
tions, special pleading from the highly respected Professor Admoni, and
the fact that Akhmatova had praised him highly when she was alive, his
application was turned down. These instances prove how even writers of
the older generation had trouble with their careers; however, among their
generation, Brodsky and Naiman can be considered unlucky, for the success
rate of their peers in becoming official writers was certainly much higher
than for writers who were born too late to have benefited from the Thaw.
Unofficial Literary Activity Becomes More Self-Conscious
Those poets of the younger generation who had missed out on the oppor-
tunities of the Thaw had little interest in official literature. The relationship
between the Union and the poets was soured, with the Union giving little
encouragement or help to the poets, and the younger generation of poets
apparently eschewing assimilation into official literature in the form of
Union membership. As the gap between official and unofficial literature
32 Uspenskaya describes a second manuscript found at Sovetskii pisatel' in the 1980s,

which consists of a selection of the poems from Zimnyaya pochta and some others.
This manuscript appears to have been submitted to the publishers at one stage of
the process described above: ‘O pervom neopublikovannom sbornike’, pp. 331–5.
33 Admoni first tried to have Naiman’s initial application reconsidered by the Secretariat,
but it was insisted that the application be processed by the Admissions Committee
in line with standard practice: ‘Protokoly sekretariata 1968’, TsGALI St Petersburg: f.
371; op. 1; d. 533. When the application came back from the Admissions Committee, it
was not approved by the Secretariat: ‘Protokoly zasedanii sekretariata 1969’, TsGALI
St Petersburg: f. 371; op. 1; d. 553.
widened, poets became more conscious of the distinction between liter-

ary work which had the official stamp of approval and that which did
not. Boris Ivanov (b. 1928) remembers that in the mid-1960s the phrase
‘unpublishable work’ (veshch' nepechatnaya) began to be used to denote
something of worth; in other words, officialdom became associated with
hack-work, while underground culture was believed to produce works of
quality.34 Writers and readers began to rely more on samizdat to read what
was interesting and worthwhile.
Such a dismissive attitude towards published poetry arose because
of the conservatism and politicisation of official publishing at the time,
but there is also an element of protest in this opinion, which is likely to
have been prompted in young writers who were never given opportunities
to publish their own work and were forced to rely on samizdat. Earlier,
samizdat had often been produced not in opposition to, but as well as
official publishing; now that official policy had become more conserva-
tive and it seemed less likely to many writers that their work would ever
be published, it seems to have become a more self-conscious alternative to
official publishing than the student journals of the 1950s had been. Several
new samizdat publishing houses began their activities in the second half
of the 1960s: Viktor Erl' (b. 1947) began ‘Pol'za’ (‘Benefit’), Galina Levina
(b. 1946?) ‘Galevi’, and the Zemstovskys ‘Zemizdat’.35
The poets who were more orientated towards samizdat publishing usu-
ally also prioritised informal, unofficial literary activities over official ones.
Although many of them attended LITOs like the ‘Narvskaya zastava’ and
the group at Sovetskii pisatel', they tended to meet privately as well, typi-
cally in cafés and the smoking rooms of libraries. The picture of the poetry
movement at this time would not be complete without mention of various
significant individuals who existed by and large outside the groups we have
identified. The principal individual poets of the time are: Aleksandr Morev
(1934–1979), Vyacheslav Leikin (b. 1937), Mikhail Yasnov, Oleg Grigor'ev
34 Boris Ivanov, ‘Evolyutsiya literaturnykh dvizhenii’ in ILNL, pp. 17–28 (p. 24).
35 Dolinin, ‘Leningradskii periodicheskii samizdat serediny 50-kh–80-kh godov’, in
Samizdat, pp. 3–21 (p. 11).
96 Chapter 2
(1943–1992), Aleksandr Gornon (b. 1946), Elena Shvarts (b. 1948), Aleksey
Shel'vakh (b. 1948), and Elena Dunaevskaya (b. 1950). The degree to which
these individuals published their work varied, with Yasnov publishing
translations, Grigor'ev children’s literature, but Dunaevskaya and Shel'vakh
relying on samizdat.
The largest and best-known of the new, independent groups of poets
was known as the ‘Malaya sadovaya poets’. Its members belonged to the
younger generation, born mostly around 1944, and met at a tiny café on
Malaya Sadovaya which was a part of the Eliseevskii shop, a grand food
hall with its main entrance on Nevsky Prospect. The poets would drop into
the café for something to eat and often find friends there, with whom they
would move on to another place to sit, talk, and read poetry.36 In 1966 the
Malaya Sadovaya poets produced a samizdat collection of poetry entitled
Fioretti.37 This almanac began as a samizdat project, but just before it
was produced, a member of the unofficial group of Moscow poets known
as SMOG (Samoe molodoe obshchestvo geniev), probably Vladimir
Batshev,38 visited the Leningrad group and suggested that they join forces
with the SMOGists in producing a collection which was guaranteed pub-
lication either in the USSR, where it had the support of Khrushchev’s
daughter Rada Adzhubei, or abroad in Grani. The two groups did join
forces, but the plan was foiled by an informer who was involved in typing
up the collection, and the cooperation between SMOG and the Malaya
Sadovaya poets was abandoned.
Savitsky recounts how, after the production of Fioretti fell through,
Mikhail Yupp (b. 1938) suggested the Leningrad group produce an oral
36 Vladimir Erl', interview with the author, tape recording, St Petersburg, 9 June
2003.
37 Stanislav Savitsky, Andegraund. Istoriya i mify leningradskoi neofitsial'noi literatury
(Moscow; Kafedra slavistiki Universiteta Khelsinki: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie,
2002), p. 34; and in Vladimir Erl', ‘Neskol'ko dopolnenii (“Fioretti”, Istoriko-
literaturnye chteniya; izdatel'stva “Pol'za” i “Palata mer i vesov”), melkie zamechaniya’,
in Samizdat, pp. 58–63 (pp. 58–9).
38 Savitsky, Andegraund, p. 34. For details of SMOG, and the fate of Vladimir Batshev
see Grani 61 (1966).
version of their almanac by holding a recital of all the poems. The first of
two planned readings went ahead at the Herzen Pedagogical Institute and
seemed to be a success with the audience; however, a Komsomol member
closed the evening with a damning speech that put an end to hopes of
holding the second reading, which was planned for the University:
This is ideological subversion within the walls of a Soviet institute. Because we can’t
give them white ‘Cadillacs’ and country villas, all their lives they will take revenge
on us with their poetry.39
These typical assertions that the poets coveted Western goods and life-
style bore no relation to the content of the poems, but were a formulaic
message for the audience that these poets should not be given sympathy.
Eventually, a samizdat version of the almanac was produced, but it never
achieved the grand status it might have, had the cooperation with SMOG
come to fruition.
The members of SMOG continued with their project and pursued the
line of tamizdat publishing. Their collection appeared in Grani entitled
Sfinksy (Sphinxes);40 it includes poems by both Vladimir Erl' and Aleksandr
Mironov (b. 1948), who were visiting Batshev in Moscow as he was putting
the collection together and were invited to contribute some of their work.
The collection contains a number of politicised poets who are clearly con-
cerned with the themes of the dissident movement; others, including the
Leningrad poets, are more literary. As a whole, it gives us some examples
of the form, content, and style of unofficial poetry of this time. The work
is written predominantly in strict form, with standard punctuation and
capitalisation, even though the collection opens with the translation of
an e. e. cummings poem, in which Cummings’s lack of punctuation and
capitalisation is preserved. Interestingly, Erl' and Mironov are among the
most experimental of the poets included, and each have at least one poem
written in Cummings’s style. This is not representative of the formal tenden-
cies in poetry in Moscow and Leningrad. In fact, these two Leningraders
39 Savitsky, ‘Khelenukty v teatre’, p. 223.

40 Sfinksi, Grani 59 (1965), 7–75.
98 Chapter 2
and the group around Khvostenko were the only poets who orientated
themselves specifically towards the futurist and avant-garde tradition of
Russian poetry; the Petersburg ‘classical’ tradition was still the dominant
school in Leningrad in the late 1960s and 1970s in official and unofficial
poetry alike. In the samizdat collection Zhivoe zerkalo, produced in 1972
(see below), the work of ten of the fourteen poets in the collection is writ-
ten in strict form.
The story of Fioretti, and the inclusion of Mironov’s and Erl'’s work
in Sfinksy, illustrate how Moscow and Leningrad poetry circles sometimes
intersected. That in this case the poets got to know each other person-
ally is relatively unusual, however; more often than not, poets knew of
each others’ existence through reading samizdat manuscripts, but did not
meet.41 Erl' and Mironov got to know the SMOGists through the figure of
Leonid Aronzon, one poet who served as a ‘link’ between Leningrad and
Moscow through his many friends in the capital. Aronzon was older than
the Khelenukts, and a figure of authority that they looked up to. His circle
of literary acquaintances in Leningrad was wide, including, for example,
the poets Rein, Naiman, Bobyshev, and Brodsky, with whom he associ-
ated in the early 1960s, and Aleksey Khvostenko and his circle of friends.
Aronzon had published hardly any of his work,42 and Erl' suggests that it
was the complexity and sophistication of his poems that led to Aronzon’s
difficulty in publishing in the Soviet press. His obviously Jewish surname
would also have played its part in prejudicing editors against him. (In
general, Jewish surnames had come to be associated with the unofficial
and the dissident worlds in Leningrad.43) His work did not even have a
particularly wide circulation in samizdat. Although his name was known,
41 Boris Taigin, interview with the author, tape recording, St Petersburg, 21 November
2002.
42 He published one poem for adults, about a building project, in the Tashkent paper
Komsomolets Uzbekistana in 1962; and two for children in 1967 and 1969 in the
children’s almanac Druzhba.
43 Erl', interview, 9 June 2003.
and he is often cited as the ‘other’ Brodsky of the time,44 his poetry was
never passed from person to person in manuscript form with the kind
of fervour that Brodsky’s was. It seems possible that his suicide in 1970
heightened interest in his work.
The influence of SMOG on Erl' and Mironov, and the group that they
formed called the Khelenukts, was significant:
For the Khelenukts, SMOG served as an example of how an artistic group might
function. On returning to Leningrad, V. Erl' set up a small-scale typescript publish-
ing house called ‘Pol'za’, in which he would produce a number of poetry collections
and artistic pamphlets …45
The Khelenukts were formed in about 1965 from poets who were associated
with the Malaya Sadovaya group. Their behaviour was heavily influenced by
the concept of the absurd, which informed not only their poetry and art,
but also their activities in everyday life. Much of the Khelenukts’ activity
went on in private apartments behind closed doors, but performance art of
a kind was also improvised in public, usually in cafés. They participated in
café poetry readings around the city, too, with other poets such as Aronzon,
Khvostenko, and the Malaya sadovaya poets. They became interested in
the OBERIU and other experimental or avant-garde poets of the 1900s,
1910s and 1920s, many of whom had not been reprinted during the Stalin
period and were consequently little known to the younger generation of
poets and scholars. Like other young poets of the Thaw who set out to meet
poets of the Silver Age, or their surviving relatives, Erl' became acquainted
with the widow of Konstantin Vaginov (1899–1934) who was still living
in Leningrad in the 1960s.46 In Moscow, he and Mironov visited Aleksey
Kruchenykh (1886–1968). The influence of the OBERIU on Leningrad
44 This is suggested by Krivulin in ‘Leonid Aronzon – sopernik Iosifa Brodskogo’, in

Okhota na Mamonta (St Petersburg: Russko-Baltiiskii informatsionnyi tsentr BLITs,
1998), pp. 152–8. The impression I have not only from Erl', but also other interviewees
and the evidence in many memoirs of the period, however, suggests Aronzon was
not nearly as well known as Brodsky.
45 Savitsky, ‘Khelenukty v teatre’, p. 229.
100 Chapter 2
poetry increased as their poetry became better known through samizdat47

and through the research of the students Anatoly Aleksandrov, Mikhail
Meilakh, Tat'yana Nikol'skaya and Leonid Chertkov in the 1960s.48
Another group of poets which was active at this time grouped around
Aleksey Khvostenko (‘Khvost’) (b. 1940) and Anri Volokhonsky (b. 1936),
who were also friends of Aronzon.49 Krivulin has described the members
of this group as ‘aristocratic’, since many of them were descended from
noble families, and lists traits of the groups as ‘knowledge of foreign lan-
guages, a wide cultural horizon, Eastern esotericism and mysticism, and
experimentation, even with drugs.’50 Khvostenko and his friends were
mostly creative people – poets, sculptors, artists, writers – who were not
part of the Soviet creative world. For them, samizdat was the only method
of publishing. They were not particularly politically motivated, but simply
wished to be left alone to get on with their activities. This was not always
possible, however, and Khvostenko was tried several times as a parasite,
although always acquitted.51
47 Savitsky, ‘Khelenukty v teatre’, p. 216. According to Savitsky, in 1967 the only works
of the OBERIU known to a public wider than people who remembered the group’s
works from the pre-Stalin period, were: a small volume of Zabolotsky; a collection
of Konstantin Vaginov published when he was still alive; Kharms’s prose works
Starukha and Sluchai, which had only just appeared as typed manuscripts; and a
few poems by Nikolay Oleinikov.
48 These students were friends of the Khelenukts. A letter from Dmitry Maksimov to
Yury Lotman in 1962 perhaps reveals the origin of this interest in the OBERIU: ‘There
is a clear lineage: Khlebnikov – OBERIU – our time. Contemporary poets need to
know about this – they need it for their own literary construction [stroitel'stvo].’ ‘Iz
perepiska D. E. Maksimova c Yu. M. Lotmanom i Z. G. Mints’, Zvezda 12 (2004),
110–44 (p. 117).
49 See Bobyshev’s description of visiting Khvost in Dmitry Bobyshev, Avtoportret v
litsakh, pp. 166–8.
50 Viktor Krivulin, ‘Poeziya – eto razgovor’, p. 228.
51 Tat'yana Nikol'skaya, ‘Krug Alekseya Khvostenko’, in ILNL, pp. 92–8 (p. 92).
The Relationship between Official and Unofficial Writers
Even though unofficial and official literature became more distinct spheres
after the Thaw, membership of an unofficial group in Leningrad did not
necessarily mean that a writer was not known in, or had no contact with
the official literary world. The two worlds still regularly intersected in
officially-sponsored conferences, seminars, and LITOs, even if these did not
offer the kinds of career opportunities they had originally been intended to
create. The groups that amateur writers considered the most interesting and
worthwhile in the late 1960s included Linetskaya’s and Etkind’s seminars,
David Dar’s and Gleb Semenov’s LITOs, Etkind’s evenings of poetry in
translation, ‘Evenings of poetry and music’ at the Writers’ Union which
was organised by Natal'ya Grudinina, and ‘Evenings by the fireside’ at the
House of Composers. Many such writers also attended evenings of poetry
at the House of Writers where, in the restaurant, they would certainly
encounter, if not socialise with, members of the Writers’ Union.
Aleksey Shel'vakh (b. 1948) has explained that writers and editors
knew the younger poets, and even knew their work – presumably through
samizdat – although they had often not been formally introduced.52 In
the late 1960s, he lived in the same apartment block as Toropygin, then an
editor at the journal Avrora. The two were not personally acquainted, yet it
transpired that Toropygin knew Shel'vakh’s unpublished work when, some-
what inebriated in the restaurant of the House of Writers one evening, the
editor approached the young poet and suggested that he bring his work to
Avrora. Shel'vakh did so and they put together a selection for the journal,
but the editor of the poetry section whittled this down to some 8 lines that
he saw fit to publish, and the proposal was abandoned.
Toropygin was one of several older poets who in the second half of the
1960s wanted to see more young people being published; Ketlinskaya was
another, and at the 1967 conference she expressed her concern. She and
52 Aleksey Shel'vakh, interview with the author, tape recording, St Petersburg, 10

November 2002.
102 Chapter 2
others worried that senior figures in the Writers’ Union were in danger of
losing touch with the younger generation, and, therefore, losing influence
over them. The children’s writer Nison Khodza (1906–1978) expressed
great sympathy with the problems young writers were having in publish-
ing, and argued that:
What happens is that people who are turned down, who cannot get published, meet
up with each other, start to read to each other, and then any real criteria are lost,
because there’s no one there who could put things in their proper place and give a
genuine appraisal of things. This could be done by the editor of a publishing house,
or a journal. Without this, we could lose very talented people, because being talented
and gifted does not mean that a person writes in such a way as to bring benefit to
literature and society.53
Reading between the lines, Khodza was suggesting that without the influ-
ence of older Soviet poets, young writers would start to write in a non-Soviet
style and that it would not be possible to assimilate them into Soviet lit-
erature. Despite such warnings, this is exactly what was allowed to happen
in the 1970s.
The younger generation emerging in the late 1960s had, like the genera-
tion before them, contacts with older writers through LITOs, conferences,
and other literary events. In particular, they knew well the official writers
Gleb Semenov, who ran the Central LITO, and his former students such
as Kushner and Koroleva who also ran LITOs. The relationship between
the older and official writers and their younger counterparts was at times
antagonistic, however. Some young poets seem to have felt that members
of this older generation, who had been lucky enough to have enjoyed the
Thaw, should help them publish and give readings (this is especially appar-
ent from the letters several young writers wrote to the Writers’ Union
in 1973, described below). They seem not to have realised that relatively
young members of the Writers’ Union had limited influence within the
organisation and virtually none with editors of journals and publishing
houses. In fact, there was not much that they could do to help the careers

d. 516.
of younger writers. This tension between the generations became apparent

to me from interviews with representatives from both generations. Older
poets complained that their younger counterparts hankered too much after
publication. The younger generation, by contrast, complained that when
the Thaw poets joined the Union they came to believe they were more
gifted than the following generation, and, even if they did recognise the
talent of younger poets, were too cowardly to protest against the exclusion
of many poets from official publication.
This said, there is clear evidence that in fact some official writers of the
Thaw generation did try to help younger poets in various ways. Aleksandr
Kushner, for example, recommended some poems by Elena Shvarts for
publication in Den' poezii in 1968, but these were not included in the final
version. At a discussion of the almanac in December of that year, he pointed
out that Shvarts’s poems had not been published, and had neither the work
of Brodsky, nor a good poem by Ageev. About Shvarts’s work he said:
There were also some poems by a young poet that I recommended. They weren’t
approved. I wasn’t going to say anything, but this is another example of our short-
comings as an editorial committee.
The poem is called ‘The soul’. It is the young poet Elena Shvarts. I remember
how these lines caused consternation: ‘Like a worm in the flower – the soul will
appear’. This is perhaps the most powerful poem here. It is written in memory of
Khodasevich.
There was also a poem about the inventor of the steam engine, which I want to read
to you. It is not like the other poems (it recalls perhaps Khlebnikov or Vvedensky).
But this is a new poet.54
The fact that Shvarts was not published in Den' poezii, nor in any other
Soviet publication until 1989, gives a clear indication of the limited nature
of Kushner’s and others’ influence on editorial decisions.
It was not only more junior members of the Writers’ Union who found
themselves little able to help young writers. Even editors at journals found
that there was scarce opportunity to take a chance with an unknown poet.
In 1969 it was hoped that the new journal Avrora might provide the chances

104 Chapter 2
for young poets to publish that were so wanting in Leningrad. Soon after its
launch, however, it became apparent to many poets that the journal would
be monopolised by already established writers, and many poets dismissed
it as of no use to them.55 The problem with the journal appears not to have
been that the editors were opposed to publishing young poets’ work, but
that the tightening of censorship which occurred in the late 1960s meant,
effectively, that all editors’ hands were tied.56 It was virtually impossible for
them to take chances and publish new work by young writers.
The publishing house Detizdat (the state publishing house for chil-
dren’s literature) was, of all the Leningrad publishing houses, the most ame-
nable to publishing young people’s work in the late 1960s. Even if children’s
literature was not the genre that a writer took most seriously or aspired to
succeed in, a publication gave him or her valuable credibility, and royalties,
and could form the basis of an application to the Writers’ Union.57 The
house’s record of publications was impressive: from 1965–8, with the Thaw
fast disappearing, it brought out eighty books by new authors; of these, forty
were the first book the writer had written for children, and forty by writers
who had never published anything before. Among the former category were
Maya Borisova, Lev Kuklin (1931–2004), Lev Mochalov, Gleb Gorbovsky,
and Andrey Bitov, not all of whom found it easy to find publishers for their
poetry or prose.58 It seems that perhaps children’s literature remained a less
politicised arena, even in these more conservative times.
In 1968, the Union held a discussion of the work that publishing houses
were conducting with young writers. The Detizdat editor Boris Nikol'sky
(b. 1931) criticised the ways in which young writers were treated by many
publishing houses:

56 Andrey Ostrovsky, ‘Kak travili zhurnal “Avrora” i ego glavnogo redaktora’, Literator
10 (15), 30 March 1990, pp. 4–5 (p. 4).
57 Sergey Vol'f, for example, was accepted into the Union in 1968 as a children’s writer,
although he is known for his prose works written for adults: ‘Protokoly i stenogrammy
zasedanii sekretariata 1968’, TsGALI St Petersburg: f. 371; op. 1; d. 531.
58 ‘Zasedaniya pravleniya 1968’, TsGALI St Petersburg: f. 317; op. 1; d. 530.
One of the damaging things about work with young writers is when you say one
thing and do another. Sometimes, when a person comes to a publishing house, they
say to him that you’ve written something that isn’t any good to us. The same hap-
pens in other publishing houses. It seems to that person that he is not understood
– perhaps he is writing very well, but he’s not being published? Or his work is very
pointed and he’s not being published. This is damaging. Sometimes the editor says
directly: ‘Well, you’ve written something very good, I like it, but you know yourself,
that it won’t get published.’ It seems to me that there can be nothing worse than this
kind of hypocrisy.59
His comments give a good impression of the kinds of contradictory reac-

tions that young writers often encountered at publishing houses, especially
after the Thaw. The blame for this attitude no doubt lay partly with the
editors themselves, but the Soviet system ensured that editors played safe
and did not try to publish risky or challenging literature by making them
personally responsible for everything published in their journals. Thus,
they would usually err on the side of caution.
Despite the efforts of Avrora and Detizdat, towards the end of the
1960s the great forums for poetry which had existed during the Thaw
were dwindling in their numbers and significance for poets. The number
of serious and interesting LITOs had fallen sharply, as had the number of
opportunities for reading in public.60 The Conferences of Young Writers
were still held biennially, but recommendations were often not taken seri-
ously by publishing houses, so nothing came of them.61 Readings by young
writers were still held from time to time, but one notoriously unsuccessful
event in 1968 illustrates their precarious position.
The young prose writers Maya Danini and Boris Vakhtin, who had
joined the Writers’ Union during the Thaw, organised an evening of poetry
and prose readings held at the House of Writers on 30 January. On that
evening, the Secretariat of the Union was holding a meeting in the same
building. The minutes reveal that members of the Secretariat expressed
59 Loc. cit.
61 This was one of the complaints that Krivulin, Okhapkin, and Chirskov made to the
Secretariat of the Writers’ Union in their letter of 1973 (see below).
106 Chapter 2
concern about the event when it transpired that none of them knew which
writers were going to read at it, that most of them had not been invited,
that the programme advertised on the ticket had in fact changed, and that
there was to be an exhibition of work by an artist that none of them had
ever heard of. It was alleged that Danini had chosen only her own friends
to read at the meeting, and that this was quite inappropriate for an evening
held under the auspices of the Writers’ Union.62
According to Vladimir Uflyand, who read at the event, at the time the
evening seemed to be a success.63 He explains that the following day, how-
ever, the nationalist club Rossiya together with the chief editor of the journal
Leningradskaya panorama (Leningrad panorama), denounced the evening to
the authorities as a Zionist ‘sabbath’ or ‘orgy’ (sionistskii shabash): Brodsky,
Uflyand, Gorbovsky, Popov, Tat'yana Galushko, and Sergey Dovlatov were
among those who were named as ‘Zionists’. Up until this fiasco Uflyand had
thought that he might be able to publish his work at some point in the future,
but after the evening he realised that this was no longer a realistic aim.64
The organisers of the evening were duly brought before the Secretariat
of the Writers’ Union to explain themselves and be reprimanded.65 While
Vakhtin and Danini acknowledged that mistakes had been made in the
organisation of the evening, both tried to explain what their aim in organ-
ising it had been, and how they considered it to have been moderately suc-
cessful. Vakhtin said that the evening had not been prepared in advance,
but that it had nevertheless passed without any serious problems. Both
he and Danini claimed that the somewhat risky form of the evening had

63 Vladimir Uflyand, ‘Odin iz vitkov istorii piterskoi kul'tury’, Petropol' 3 (1991), 108–15
(p. 113). The event was recorded in the Khronika tekushchikh sobytii, and this text
published in the West in Reddaway, Uncensored Russia, pp. 430–1. This report of the
event makes an explicit connection between Brodsky’s involvement in the evening,
and the decision not to publish a collection of his poetry, presumably Zimnyaya
pochta.
64 Uflyand, interview, 9 November 2002.
65 ‘Protokoly i stenogrammy zasedanii sekretariata 1968’, TsGALI St Petersburg: f. 371;
op. 1; d. 561.
produced very interesting results and original ideas. Danini explained that
they had, in fact, hoped that this would happen: ‘There is so little happen-
ing here that is interesting, we decided to make this evening not boring,
interesting, to get young people interested …’.
The impression of the evening that the Secretariat had formed, how-
ever, was less positive. Khodza had heard rumours at the university that
Brodsky would be reading his work, and saw that this had been one of its
major selling points. While he denied suggesting that Brodsky should not be
allowed to read in the House of Writers, Khodza felt that the event should
not have been promoted in such a scandalous light. Granin’s complaint
about the evening related to the material that was read in public. He saw
that perhaps Danini and Vakhtin had hoped to help their friends with the
organisation of the evening, and that the reading had effectively evaded
censorship. Of Sergey Dovlatov, one of the participants in the evening, he
said, ‘I know Dovlatov, and he is talented, but the majority of his stories are
not suitable for publication, and that means that they are not suitable for
readings.’ This comment illustrates how far the attitude towards readings of
young writers had changed since the Khrushchev Thaw, when young writers
had had far more freedom to read their unpublished work in public.
Vakhtin and Danini told the Secretariat that the event had been organ-
ised by a new group of writers called ‘Search’ (‘Poisk’) which had grown
out of the LITO that had been held at Sovetskii pisatel'. Significantly, this
word ‘search’ was one closely associated with the new guard of young writ-
ers who had appeared during the Thaw, to which both Vakhtin and Danini
belonged; it had appeared in the titles of first collections by Britanishsky
(Searches) and Gorbovsky (Searches for Warmth), and suggested a spirit of
open-mindedness and discovery. The group comprised twenty-one writers,
and included both official writers and others who had not yet been admitted
to the Union. Vakhtin explained that they aimed to invite writers to come
and read their work and to discuss creative problems with them.
Members of the Secretariat did not greet the news of the new literary
group with enthusiasm; Khodza immediately declared his opposition to the
group on the grounds that throughout the history of the Writers’ Union
a war had been waged against the proliferation of groups. Others asked
sceptical and provocative questions about the criteria for membership, and
108 Chapter 2
the rationale for the group’s existence: ‘… what is the difference between
the section itself and this union, what is the difference between the blood
of one group and of the others? What is this Masonic lodge that’s been
created in the section?’ At the next meeting of the Secretariat, on 5 March
1968, it was decided that the group should not be permitted to exist.66 The
banning of a group, whose name suggested that it had hoped to preserve
the spirit of the Thaw, seems symbolically and literally to have brought to
an end the hope that ‘youth literature’ and the Thaw writers had intro-
duced to Soviet literature over ten years before. It underlines how little
interest the authorities now had in encouraging and promoting young
and amateur writers.
By the end of the 1960s just a few isolated opportunities to read in
public preserved some of the spirit of the Thaw. Among these were the
readings in some closed institutes, nicknamed ‘letter boxes’ (pochtovye
yashchiki), that certain groups of poets enjoyed. These readings began when
members of such institutes identified young poets that they liked at official
evenings of poetry, and invited them to come and read. As the official read-
ings grew rarer, contacts with these institutes grew increasingly valuable.
The advantage of reading at the ‘letter boxes’ was that these institutes were
relatively independent of both the literary and political authorities.67 Poets
who enjoyed the patronage of these institutes included Vyacheslav Leikin,
who often read his poetry alongside bards who sang and accompanied
themselves on the guitar. From 1965 to 1970, Eduard Shneiderman and
Aleksandr Morev read every year at a biological institute where one of the
research workers, Vera Vladimirovna Rol'nik, supported a group of young
poets by giving them a forum to present their poetry.68 Such opportunities
were enjoyable but, unlike the readings in which young poets had appeared
during the Thaw, they did not help a young poet’s chances of publication
or a professional career.
66 ‘Protokoly i stenogrammy zasedanii sekretariata 1968’, TsGALI St Petersburg: f. 371;

op. 1; d. 531.
67 Vyacheslav Leikin, interview with the author, tape recording, St Petersburg, 11
November 2002.
68 Shneiderman, interview, 19 November 2002.
Work with Young Writers in the 1970s
At the beginning of the 1970s, Gleb Semenov was still closely involved with
the Union’s work with young writers. He had been running the Central
LITO for poets since 1968. Despite his great experience in running LITOs
and reputation as an avid supporter of young writers, at a meeting of the
Secretariat of the Writers’ Union that year, Semenov confessed that the
group was difficult. His comment again points to both the contrast and
the antagonism between the generations:
My relationship is as complicated with these writers as it was close with the older ones.
And this has led to a creative impoverishment – they almost always lack immediacy,
trust, and wonder at the world. They don’t have that … Apart from the lack of imme-
diacy, they are also hampered by their appropriation of fashionable innovations.69
The qualities that Semenov deemed to be lacking in the poetry of his stu-
dents were those particularly associated with the ‘youth literature’ of the
Thaw period. His comments here indicate to what extent the succeeding
generation had moved on from their predecessors in terms of aesthetics,
and that this was not an acceptable development for the Soviet literary
authorities. It also suggests that these poets did not trust Semenov in the
way that their predecessors had. This LITO soon closed down, leaving even
fewer groups for young poets in the city to attend.
In 1973 the official provision for young writers in the city under the
auspices of the Writers’ Union apparently consisted of just three seminars
(for science fiction writers, translators, and critics) and four LITOs: the
‘Narvskaya zastava’ run by Semenov and Koroleva; the group at Detgiz run
by Aleksandr Krestinsky (1928–2005); the ‘Golos yunosti’ at the Trudovye
rezervy now run by Aleksey El'yanov (b. 1936); and the LITO in Pushkin
run by Tat'yana Gnedich. In addition to these groups, a writers’ club had
been set up which aimed to attract more young writers to socially-orien-
tated work. This information was delivered at a meeting of the Secretariat

110 Chapter 2
in 1973 which set out to examine the state of work with young writers.70
At the meeting there was not much enthusiasm expressed for this work:
Nikol'sky talked of the need to make higher demands of young writers;
and Toropygin believed that Avrora and Molodoi Leningrad had increased
young writers’ chances of publishing their work (although many young writ-
ers found this not to be the case). The writer Gleb Goryshin (1931–1998)
was the only person at the meeting to express concern over the state of the
relationship that the Union had with young writers. He saw a situation in
which ‘the link between generations has been broken, the link between
skill and culture.’71
What Goryshin said was true: the central figures of Socialist Realist
literature in Leningrad, such as Daniil Granin, Mikhail Dudin, and Oleg
Shestinsky (the latter belonged to a younger generation, but rose within
the ranks of the Union quickly), did not have any relationship with the
young generation of amateur poets. Important relationships did exist,
on the other hand, between members of the young generation and older
poets and translators who were not exponents of Socialist Realism, such
as Etkind, Admoni, Gnedich, and Linetskaya. The fact that these transla-
tors, academics, and poets exerted influence over young writers, rather than
Socialist Realist writers, could only encourage the younger generation to
diverge from the tradition of Soviet literature. Nevertheless, little heed
was paid to Goryshin’s warning. At the conclusion of the discussion, the
following ten resolutions were drawn up:
1. That the Committee for Work with Young Writers should develop a
working relationship between the most talented young writers and
the Komsomol organisations of industry and shock-construction
projects.
2. That meetings of experienced and young writers should be held
more frequently at the Young Writers’ Club.

71 Loc. cit.
3. To recommend that the journals Neva, Avrora and Zvezda give

young writers material for writing sketches and journalistic
pieces.
4. To recommend young writers more widely for work in television
and script-writing for science fiction films.
5. To consider reviving the LITO at Sovetskii pisatel', and to take the
work of the LITO at Avrora in hand.
6. To listen regularly to the reports of young writers who had been
away on creative trips.
7. To hold a Conference of Young Writers in 1973 with the following
provisos:
a) that only writers who have already produced an interesting
piece of work may take part;
b) that experienced writers who are good at working with young
writers be recruited to run the seminars;
c) that it be borne in mind that too many recommendations for
publication were given out at the last conference, and this time
seminar leaders should be especially careful about whom they
recommend.
8. That the Committee for Work with Young Writers should ana-
lyse the state of work in the LITOs. That it should be considered
irregular for one writer to run 2 or 3 groups.
9. To hear a report from Avrora on its work with young writers.
10. That the Committee for Work with Young Writers and the creative
Sections should put together a plan for work with young writers
in 1973–4.
These resolutions do not propose any far-reaching changes to the existing

system of work with young writers, nor do they aim to make the career
path of a young writer easier, as similar sets of resolutions did during the
Thaw; they seek, instead, to exert more control over, and especially political
influence on young writers, and to work with only a small group already
known to the literary establishment.
The existing forums for young writers at times proved no help to those
who attended them. After the Conference of Young Writers in 1973, the
112 Chapter 2
young poets Vasily Filippov (b. 1955) and Boris Kupriyanov (b. 1949) were
praised and recommended for publication, or at least further attention;72
as things turned out, however, neither of them went on to publish in the
USSR, although their work appeared in tamizdat.73 At a discussion of this
conference David Dar, in his customary outspoken manner, sharply criti-
cised the disservice that the Writers’ Union was doing to many writers by
denying them publication. He claimed that the prose writer Chirskov, for
example, was already so accomplished that he had as much to teach the
leaders of the seminars at the conference as they had to teach him; yet he
had not been published. Dar talked about the plight of many poets who
were in a similar situation:
Bobyshev, Okhapkin, Krivulin, Kuz'minsky – young people like their poems. Their
poems are difficult, they use different poetics, have their own style. But if you are
going to accept a poet, you have to want to accept him. We should sympathise with
the difficult fates of young poets in a friendly way, understand them, help, and create
morally normal conditions for their work.74
At this same meeting, Aleksandr Kushner was outspoken on the subject

of young writers, and supported Dar’s stand. He named as writers he con-
sidered to be talented Ol'ga Beshenkovskaya, who went on to become
a popular poet in underground circles; Yury Kolker, who was an active
member of the literary underground until he emigrated to London; and
Vladimir Khanan, who also published much of his work in samizdat.
Kushner described how he had put together a collection of Viktor Krivulin’s
work for publication and written an accompanying letter to the publisher,
but had got nowhere. Several other writers, too, lent their support to the
case for an improvement in work with young writers.
72 Loc. cit.
73 Filippov later began to suffer from mental illness and is now permanently resident in
a mental institution, but his work was awarded the Andrey Bely prize for literature
in 2001; since perestroika Kupriyanov has become an Orthodox priest at a church in
Pushkin, and no longer writes poetry.
Other Secretariat members at the meeting were not supportive of

the young writers, who were clearly perceived as a group. Fedor Abramov
(1920–1983), said he could not see what the problem was which prevented
them from publishing. Semen Botvinnik (b. 1922) said that he had been
acquainted with the so-called young writers under discussion for ten years
already, and that during that time he had heard them read at meetings of
the Poets’ Section, read reviews of their work, and the work itself; but, he
maintained, it would not be possible to publish collections of their work:
‘… it seems to me that this is a group of people who simply have nothing
to say.’ The impasse between the two camps seems to have resulted in no
action being taken on the subject.
At a meeting in May 1973 the Secretariat discussed the number of read-
ings that were taking place in the city; this discussion again illustrates the
negative attitude that many members held towards young writers.75 It was
alleged that 11,000 readings were given in the city of Leningrad in the last
year, a figure which many writers considered far too high. A particular cause
for concern was the behaviour of young writers who, Botvinnik argued, ‘do
not control themselves and sometimes read in public things that it’s just
impossible to listen to’. It was suggested that the Bureau of Propaganda,
which was in charge of the readings in the city, should ‘be more careful
about letting new authors take part in readings’. Another speaker felt that
requests from the audience at readings jeopardised control over the eve-
nings, and that the contents of the readings should be decided beforehand.
There was a general consensus among the members of the Secretariat that
readings should be given predominantly by members of the Writers’ Union;
that the status of writer that such a reading confers on a person should be
the preserve of professional writers, lest other, amateur poets make public
reading a kind of profession in itself. All these decisions were damaging
for young writers, whose chances of reaching an audience through official
channels were being ever more eroded.
75 Loc. cit.
114 Chapter 2
For young writers in the 1970s, one of the last vestiges of the cultural
Thaw were the ‘Vechera poezii i muzyki’ (Evenings of poetry and music)
which took place at the House of Writers in Leningrad. Elena Shvarts
remembers that, although the majority of poets who read at the evenings
were official writers, at the end of the evening the organiser, Irina Malyarova,
would try to include a young poet in the programme as well.76 In 1974
Shvarts gave her first public reading at one such evening; after that occa-
sion Malyarova was no longer allowed given such a free rein in organising
the events. Members of the Secretariat decided that the evenings were
planned and carried out with far too little input from them, and as such were
uncontrolled’.77 An editorial committee was set up to exert some control
over the evenings, which included Malyarova, but also V. N. Kuznetsov
(representing the Party bureau), E. I. Ryvina (from the House of Writers),
and A. A. Shevelev (representing the Committee for Work with Young
Writers).78 The presence of a party official was obviously intended to keep
the evenings in order politically.
Further control was extended over the Writers’ Union’s work with
young writers the same year when it was also decided that LITOs in the
city should not be run by anybody who was not a member of the Union.79
In addition to this, Orlov announced a change to the process of admission
to the Union: no details of an application were to be given until a final deci-
sion was taken by the Secretariat. This made the process yet more closed
and secretive, and less open to general discussion. Official literature was
growing more exclusive, politicised, and conservative.
76 Elena Shvarts, interview with the author, St Petersburg, 17 September 2003. Shvarts
also describes these evenings and her participation in one in Vidimaya storona zhizni
(St Petersburg and Moscow: Limbus Press, 2003), p. 34.
78 Loc. cit.
79 Loc. cit.
Unofficial Literature goes ‘Underground’
As the number of opportunities for public reading, publishing, and ulti-

mately of pursuing a career as a writer reduced, young writers began to
create well-organised forums for themselves which functioned increasingly
as alternatives to official activities. These included discussion groups and
seminars, some of which became well-established and ran for many years.
One very important meeting place for amateur writers and members of
unofficial groups was the café known as ‘Saigon’ which opened on the corner
of Nevsky Prospect and Vladimir Street at the end of the 1960s.80 Sergey
Stratanovsky recalls both these forums in his description of the milieu of
young Leningrad writers at that time:
There was Saigon, there were apartment exhibitions, Koka Kuz'minsky’s circle, David
Dar’s circle. There was, lastly, the religious-philosophical group that gathered at my
home (permanent members: Kirill Butyrin, Aleksandr Zhidkov, Nikolay Il'in and
me.)81
From about 1968, ‘Saigon’ became an unofficial meeting place where poets,
writers and artists from many different backgrounds and groups began
to congregate.82 The appearance of one meeting place where all kinds of
people gathered, as opposed to the many cafés which had been popular
during the 1950s and early 1960s, was important: the unofficial writers,
artists, human rights activists, feminists, and Christian groups that had
existed often in isolation from each other began to meet and gradually
form a more substantial sub-culture.
It is this sub-culture of Leningrad in the 1970s, rather than disparate
groups of writers, artists, Baptists, and political dissidents of the 1950s and
80 The café was actually called ‘Moskva’.

81 Stratanovsky, ‘Semidesyatye – preodolenie strakha’.
82 Aleksandr Gornon and Boris Konstriktor, interview with the author, tape record-
ing, St Petersburg, 16 November 2002. Kuz'minsky describes Saigon in ‘Poety i
kafe-shalmany’, in Blue Lagoon Anthology, vol. 4A, pp. 150–3 (p. 153).
116 Chapter 2
1960s, which was termed the ‘underground’, first of all from outside, in the
West at the end of the 1960s, and later on in Leningrad as well.83 Savitsky
suggests that this sub-culture in the USSR modelled itself on the youth
sub-cultures which grew up in Britain and America in the 1960s, and sees
the adoption of Western terminology as one symptom of this dependence.
Although it is tempting to see a direct relationship between a Western
model and Soviet imitation, the situation in which the sub-culture of the
1970s arose in Leningrad is not quite as straightforward as this.84
It must be noted that Savitsky acknowledges the differences between
the two cultural contexts in terms of their politics.85 We could add that
both the way in which official institutions acted as meeting places for young
people who went on to form the Soviet underground, and the particular
relationships of young writers in the underground with members of the
generation of their grandparents, are also specific to the USSR. Another
crucial difference is the status of religion: in the West, Christianity was and
still is associated with the status quo, while in the USSR it was the province
of the underground. The subject of religion had appeared in Leningrad
poetry in the 1950s and 1960s in the work of first Iosif Brodsky and then
Dmitry Bobyshev in particular.86 In the 1970s interest in religion and the
Bible were phenomena observed more widely in Soviet society.87 After the
83 Savitsky, Andegraund, p. 47.

84 It is worth bearing in mind that Savitsky’s study concentrates on a fairly small group
of underground writers who were probably more self-conscious in their aping of
Western sub-cultures than other writers who were also outside the official, Soviet
system.
85 Savitsky, Andegraund, pp. 82–6.
86 It seems likely that these and other, later poets addressed religious themes under the
influence of Akhmatova, with whom they had direct contact, and Pasternak, whose
poems from the novel Doktor Zhivago were circulating widely in samizdat in the late
1950s and 1960s.
87 Interview with Vyacheslav Dolinin, tape recording, St Petersburg 23 September
2003. Dolinin has written on the results of a survey of belief and atheism which was
taken of several thousand workers in Leningrad in 1971, and again in 1979; it shows
that, while the number of people expressing religious belief did not rise very much
over the 1970s, the number of people declaring themselves atheists fell dramatically.
very anti-religious policies of the Khrushchev era, the official attitude to

beliefs and religion softened somewhat, and a wider range of people began
to pursue their interests in many spiritual and quasi-spiritual activities
such as yoga, Eastern mysticism, extra-sensory perception, astrology, and
fortune-telling. Several young writers attended the religious-philosophical
seminar founded by Tat'yana Goricheva, which formed an important part
of the ‘underground’ intellectual life.88
These culturally specific circumstances point to a complex relationship
between Soviet and Western undergrounds; there are nevertheless some
similarities worth considering, the most important of which concerns the
economic and social backgrounds of members of these cultural groups.
A survey of the writers whose biographies appear in the encyclopaedia
Samizdat Leningrada (Leningrad Samizdat) reveals very quickly that
almost all the young writers who took part in the culture of unofficial lit-
erature were from middle-class or military backgrounds, whose parents were
engineers, doctors, lawyers, academics, architects, and similar professions.
Of 70 writers whose parents’ occupations are listed, only four appear to have
come from working-class backgrounds (Boris Ivanov; Boris Kudryakov,
Oleg Okhapkin, and Petr Cheigin). The situation in Britain and America
was no different from this: most hippies and members of other alternative
youth cultures came from, and still come from the middle classes. In both
cases this points to a link between affluence and alternative culture. When,
in the post-war years, the Soviet Union developed its industrial strength, a
new wealth was created which the ‘middle classes’ of white-collar workers,
and in particular the technical intelligentsia, enjoyed.89 Thus it can be seen
that, along with the death of Stalin and the Khrushchev Thaw, the affluence
of the post-war years constituted an important factor in the development
of the unofficial or underground movement in the USSR.
See O.V. [pseudonym of Vyacheslav Dolinin], ‘Neverie teryaet oporu v strane’, Posev
6 (1980), p. 13.
88 Ivanov, ‘Evolyutsiya literaturnykh dvizhenii’, p. 26.
89 See Vera Dunham, In Stalin’s Time (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1976).
118 Chapter 2
The unofficial literary culture of the 1970s is often described using met-
aphors of downward movement and of a deep, cut-off world. Not only did
people go ‘underground’ when they stopped attending officially-sponsored
LITOs and conferences and chose to create their own literary society, they
also moved ‘downwards’ along the social ladder when many, despite having
a university education, chose to do menial jobs. Amateur poets and writers
in Soviet society needed to be able to prove to the authorities that they
had some officially recognised occupation so as to avoid prosecution for
parasitism; unlike amateur poets of the 1960s who often wrote for theatre,
film or television, or continued with an entirely separate profession besides
poetry,90 many poets in the 1970s came to favour working in unskilled jobs
that were conventionally outside the domain of the intelligentsia, such as
boiler stokers, night watchmen, bargemen, and lift operators. At such a low
social level their literary activities did not attract the interfering attention
of the authorities and they did not have to pretend political convictions.
These jobs were not well paid, and for this reason were not an option for
everyone: those who had families to support, for example, could not afford
to earn such a pittance.91 Many poets were able to take such jobs because
they lived a kind of bohemian lifestyle in which they avoided taking on
the responsibilities of having families, and even of long-term, serious rela-
tionships. They often lived at home with their parents; this was considered
fairly normal in the USSR, where housing shortages were such that it was
very unusual for a young, single person to live alone.92
Vyacheslav Dolinin has described how the boiler-room (kotel'naya)
occupied a special position in unofficial literary culture, because so many
writers found work in these places.93 The advantages of the work were
not only that the jobs demanded neither Party membership nor political
conviction, but also that the working hours were often not too long or
strenuous. Typically, a boiler-man would work three days on, three days
90 Vyacheslav Leikin, for example, continued to work as a geologist and later ran a
children’s poetry club. Leikin, interview, 11 November 2002.
91 Shel'vakh, interview, 10 November 2002.
92 Elena Dunaevskaya, email to the author, 9 February 2005.
93 Dolinin, interview, 23 September 2003.
off, but some people found positions where even less was demanded of
them. Even at work there was little to do – duties usually involved checking
from time to time that the boiler was lit and working, and being on hand
in case of an emergency – there was, therefore, plenty of time for writing
and reading.94 Dolinin worked as the shift foreman at the ‘Teploenergiya
3’ boiler room at the Admiralty works, where, among other writers, Oleg
Okhapkin, Vladimir Khanan, Elena Pudovkina, Boris Ivanov, and Vladlen
Gavril'chik (b. 1929) worked. The boiler-room at the Herzen Pedagogical
Institute was also a ‘literary’ one.95
Alternatives to Official Publishing in the 1970s
The development of a self-conscious literary underground together with

the difficulties in publishing faced by a significant number of young writ-
ers led, in the 1970s, to an increase in samizdat and, eventually, tamizdat
publishing. Stratanovsky’s collection V strakhe i trepete (In fear and trepi-
dation) was published in samizdat in 1970,96 and Vladimir Erl' revived his
samizdat publishing house the same year, renaming it ‘Palata mer i vesov’
(‘The board of weights and measures’).97 In 1971, the brothers Mikhail and
Konstantin Ivanov (b. 1944 and 1942) produced a samizdat paper entitled
Zusammen;98 Krivulin began to produce his own personal journal, which
included prose, criticism, and reviews; and Erl' started to collect all the work

95 Writers who worked in the Pedagogical Institute boiler-rooms later produced the
samizdat almanac Topka between 1988 and 1992. The almanac only included the
work of writers who worked in boiler-rooms: ‘Topka’, in Samizdat Leningrada,
pp. 455–6.
96 Viktor Krivulin, ‘Peterburgskaya spiritual'naya lirika vchera i segodnya’, in ILNL,
pp. 99–109, p. 106.
97 Erl', ‘Neskol'ko dopolnenii’, p. 61.
98 Ivanov, ‘Po tu storonu ofitsial'nosti’, pp. 82–3.
120 Chapter 2
that Aleksey Khvostenko had left behind when he moved to Moscow, with
the idea of producing a collected works in samizdat. Poets continued to cir-
culate their work in manuscript form more informally among their friends,
and the tradition of student publications continued as well. A journal was
produced by students at the Faculty of Chemistry of Leningrad University
in 1972. It was entitled LOB, which stood for Leningradskoe obshchestvo
bibliofilov (The Leningrad society of bibliophiles), and included poetry and
literary criticism. It was a large project, with approximately thirty students
involved in the literary evenings that were held in conjunction with the
journal’s production.99 In the same year, Konstantin Kuz'minsky produced
the samizdat anthology Zhivoe zerkalo (The living mirror), which was one
of the most significant samizdat collections of the 1960s and 1970s.100 It
contained selections of work by ten poets, all of whom were friends of
Kuz'minsky.101 Also in 1972, Vladimir Maramzin and Mikhail Kheifets
began putting together a samizdat edition of Brodsky’s collected works,
which ran to five volumes. The project ended, as we have seen, in arrests.
While the state ignored much samizdat publishing, it disapproved
more strongly of tamizdat; nevertheless, its measures to stop the flow of
work from the USSR abroad proved quite ineffective. From 1957 onwards,
the émigré journal Grani regularly published an appeal for tamizdat work.102
This announcement set out the conditions and the responsibilities of the
publishing house towards authors of manuscripts it received, and sug-
gested how manuscripts might be sent to the West. In an interview with
Yakov Gordin, Vasily Betaki has described one process by which tamizdat
99 Dolinin, ‘Leningradskii periodicheskii samizdat’, p. 11.

100 Kuz'minsky, Zhivoe zerkalo. The title is the same as that of a tamizdat collection of
five Leningrad poets, The Living Mirror, which Kuz'minsky helped the American
Suzanne Massie to compile. Kuz'minsky subtitled his samizdat collection Vtoroi
etap leningradskoi poezii, suggesting that the ‘first stage’ had been represented in the
tamizdat edition.
101 Vladlen Gavril'chik, Oleg Okhapkin, Gennady Trifonov, Konstantin Kuz'minsky,
Sergey Stratanovsky, Aleksandr Ozhiganov, Boris Kupriyanov, Viktor Krivulin,
Mikhail Gendelev, Vladimir Erl', Viktor Shirali, Yury Alekseev, Boris Taigin, and
Petr Cheigin.
102 Grani 33 (1957), no page number.
was transported out of the USSR.103 Works were taken by sailors in the
merchant navy: a few took the manuscripts free of charge, but most were
paid for their services. Across Europe a system of collection and transpor-
tation was organised by about twelve émigrés, including Betaki after his
emigration in 1973, who received the tamizdat and sent journals and other
printed matter back to the USSR. There were about ten people involved
in a similar network in New York.104 Other routes apparently included the
diplomatic bags of foreign embassies.
The principal literary journal publishing tamizdat was Grani. A
survey of this quarterly periodical shows that most of the tamizdat mate-
rial it published during the period was from Moscow (e.g. the Strugatskys,
Okudzhava, Galich, Akhmadulina), and much of it was by writers who
had spent time in, or were still held in, the GULag (e.g. Solzhenitsyn,
Shalamov, Agatov-Petrov, Galanskov). Apart from the one-off publications
of three almanacs of young writers (Sintaksis, Feniks (Phoenix), and Sfinksy),
little work appeared by very young writers; that which did was primarily
from Moscow, from writers such as Natal'ya Gorbanevskaya and Vladimir
Batshev. It was only from 1975 onwards, when the samizdat journals had
been established in Leningrad, that Leningrad poets, principally those from
the younger generation, also began publishing their work in tamizdat fre-
quently: in Grani, in Vestnik Russkoi Khristyanskoi dvizheniya (Messenger
of the Russian Christian movement), and in Kontinent (Continent). There
was little cross-over between samizdat and tamizdat on the one hand, and
official publishing on the other: during the 1970s poets generally belonged
to one or another camp.
The literary world in Soviet Russia was not entirely polarized into
official and unofficial camps, however, even if this division became much
103 Yakov Gordin, ‘Beseda s podryvnym elementom’, Literator, 14 December 1990,

p. 5.
104 Given that Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe were funded for at least some time
by the CIA, it seems most likely that similar funding was provided for many of the
tamizdat publications in the West of an anti-Soviet nature. For more information
on CIA involvement in the arts, see Frances Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper:
The CIA and the Cultural Cold War (London: Granta, 1999).
122 Chapter 2
more prominent after the Thaw. Not all young writers who did not join
the Writers’ Union chose to join the underground culture and publish
their work in samizdat. Some, who neither scaled the heights of literary
professionalism nor descended to the depths of unofficial culture, found
niches for themselves in the more marginal spheres of the literary world
which were still open to writers without official status. In the 1970s, these
were fewer then had been available during the Thaw. The main spheres
were translation and children’s literature. These had already been well
established as spheres of activity open to disgraced Soviet writers, even for
such illustrious figures as Pasternak and Akhmatova, but they now became
a refuge for people who had never been Soviet writers in the first place.
Linetskaya and Etkind continued to support young translators in Leningrad
well into the 1970s, and Etkind ran readings of literature in translation at
the House of Writers called ‘Vpervye na russkom yazyke’ (‘In Russian for
the first time’).105 Azadovsky recalls the evenings:
People took part whose dazzling discourse and whose old-fashioned image struck
us young people. People from that pre-revolutionary time. Those who had returned
from the camps and exile … People of true culture … Among them: T. G. Gnedich,
I. A. Likachev, N. Ya. Rykova, A. M. Shchadrin, A. A. Engel'ke. They set the tone at
those unforgettable evenings at the house of Writers.106
Children’s writers and translators could eke out a literary existence even
when the official publication of young poets’ work had virtually ceased.
The poet Mikhail Yasnov worked as a translator for many years. His poetry
was not published in the USSR until 1986, partly because he worked for
some time as Etkind’s secretary, and Etkind’s expulsion from the Writers’
Union in 1974 and later emigration had a malign effect on Yasnov’s chances
of a literary career. In search of some literary occupation, Yasnov began
to attend El'ga Linetskaya’s seminar and publish translations. Linetskaya
tried as much as possible to help her students publish and forge careers for
105 Eduard Shneiderman, interview with the author, tape recording, St Petersburg, 19
November 2002.
106 Konstantin Azadovsky, ‘Oglyadyvayas' nazad’, in El'ga L'vovna Linetskaya, pp. 121–6
(p. 122).
themselves,107 and Yasnov was one of those who were successful. He went
on to become a translator principally of Moldavian poetry.108 In addition
to translating, Yasnov began writing children’s literature in the 1970s. Oleg
Grigor'ev was another poet who published work for children. Grigor'ev’s
way of life and occupation – he worked as a stoker in boiler-rooms and a
watchman among other jobs – were typical for a poet of the underground,
but despite his associations with this milieu, he was able to publish three
books for children between 1971 and 1989. For others, like Sergey Vol'f,
publishing children’s literature became more than just a source of income
when they joined the children’s writing section of the Union.
The Ultimate Goal of Official Publication
Publication in samizdat, tamizdat, or through children’s literature and

translation were still, for most poets, not a satisfactory substitute for the
official publication of their original work. Although by the 1970s, the pros-
pect of joining the Writers’ Union seems to have become a less attractive
option for some writers who did not want to belong to such a politicised
organisation, it is important to note that these writers had not lost the desire
to publish officially. In 1973, first Viktor Krivulin, Oleg Okhapkin, and
Fedor Chirskov, and then Tamara Bukovskaya sent letters to the Secretariat
of the Leningrad Branch of the Writers’ Union complaining about the lack
of opportunities for young writers to publish their work.109
107 Ibid., p. 124. Linetskaya also supported Elena Shvarts very much. Their relationship
is one of several important such connections between a translator from the older
generation and a young poet.
108 Mikhail Yasnov, interview with the author, tape recording, St Petersburg, 13 November
2002.
109 Eduard Shneiderman, ‘Puti legalizatsii neofitsial'noi poezii v 1970-e gody’, Zvezda
8 (1998), 194–200 (p. 197). The letters are filed with the stenograph of the meeting
124 Chapter 2
The first letter, sent before the Conference of Young Writers that year,
described the burgeoning of a ‘second literary reality’ which had grown
out of the two Central LITOs after they were shut down, which had no
recourse to official publication, and was ignored by the Writers’ Union.
Krivulin, Okhapkin, and Chirskov strongly criticised the Writers’ Union
for making empty promises that they would help young writers in the city.
In particular, they criticised the Conferences of Young Writers for giving
recommendations for publication that publishers did not act upon. They
describe some virtues of the work of young, unpublished writers being
ignored by the authorities, referring to qualities such as ‘originality’, ‘unu-
sual transparency and precision of poetic language’, ‘dynamic, bright and
grotesque images’, ‘a non-standard, creative relationship to the word’, and
‘a high, emotional incandescence, unexpectedness, and daring of artistic
conviction’. These suggest that the authors of the letter did not really believe
that the Writers’ Union insisted that literature conform to the prescrip-
tions of the Party. They may have felt this because of the contradictory
attitudes of journal editors to good, but unpublishable work; nevertheless,
the letters demonstrate a naivety about the Writers’ Union, for no amount
of appeal to the sympathy of a few liberal writers could have surmounted
the obstacles of the conservatism of many official writers, and the intran-
sigence of Soviet censorship.
The letter addressed the lack of opportunities for publishing in
Leningrad, and argued that the situation for young writers in Moscow
was, by way of contrast, much better. A list of questions raised in the letter
effectively communicates the frustration of the authors:
Why doesn’t the journal Avrora create a literary appendix in which the work of
specifically young writers could be published?
Why has the production of the ‘Cassettes’ been stopped in Leningrad?
Why does the almanac Molodoi Leningrad come out only once a year?
at which they were discussed: ‘Protokoly zasedanii sekretariata 1974’, TsGALI St

Petersburg: f. 371; op. 1; d. 640.
Why haven’t publications such as Tochka opory (Foothold ) and Novye golosa
(New Voices) become more regular and significant publications for the arts, when
there are so many talented young people in Leningrad whose works are not finding
a route to an audience?
Why has no one yet looked at the possibility of establishing a small-scale journal
that would function as the flagship for literary study by creative young people in the
city and would publish works that are imbued with the spirit of search and have a
serious attitude towards the word?
Tamara Bukovskaya’s letter of 23 October 1973 made similar complaints.

Bukovskaya compared the conditions of publication for young writers in
1973 with those that she remembered from the Thaw, when young writers
were included in Den' poezii and Molodoi Leningrad, were able to publish
collections, and gave readings of their work at the Writers’ Union. She
named Bobyshev, Krivulin, Okhapkin, Kupriyanov, and Shvarts as the new
literary movement which remained virtually unpublished; unable to stand
by and see such writers denied publication, as she claimed, Bukovskaya
wrote her letter with the aim of drawing the attention of the literary authori-
ties to her friends and colleagues.
The two letters were discussed on 16 April 1974, when the Union
members Boris Nikol'sky, Semen Botvinnik, Nina Koroleva, A. Shevelev,
and Gleb Semenov met with Bukovskaya, Krivulin, and Okhapkin.110
Botvinnik began the meeting by denying the suggestion that the three
poets were members of the entirely separate literary culture to which they
referred in their letters. He criticised their identification with only a small
group of fellow writers as a fundamental problem with their attitude: ‘You
have shut yourselves away in your own group.’ In the same vein, he described
Bukovskaya’s work as ‘closed’ (zamknutyi), ‘narrow’ (uzok), and ‘with no
way out’ (bez vykhoda). Later in the discussion, Koroleva continued with
this idea that the poets had cut themselves off from the mainstream when
she traced it through the vocabulary and style of the poets’ work in general:
‘your group has developed its own poetic language, a narrow lexical range,
stylistic monotony and, as a result, grandiloquence.’ She told the three
126 Chapter 2
young poets that if they wanted their work to be published, they ought to
write poetry which, instead of using this closed style, demonstrated broad
‘biographical decoding’ (bol'shaya biograficheskaya rasshifrovannost' ), and
addressed the subjects of the self and time. These comments, obscure as
they are, illustrate the difference in aesthetics between the young poets,
and even the more liberal representatives of official literature.
The poets made demands for publication in their letters that indicated
they assumed the Writers’ Union could directly influence the publishing
houses in Leningrad; Koroleva explained to them that that was not the
case. It seems that Okhapkin, Krivulin, and Bukovskaya were not aware of
the complexities of the publishing process, and of the relationship between
the Union and publishing houses. The young poets did not demonstrate
any awareness of the political agenda of the Soviet press, either. Semenov
seems to have lost his patience with his former students when he said quite
openly to them:
Everybody knows that there are certain conditions and demands for publication. A
publishing house is in the service of the state and it will publish what is beneficial
to the state. You need to understand this very well. And don’t be so self-indulgent.
Crying won’t get you anywhere.
Writers had faced this situation since before the war and even during the lib-
eral period of the Thaw; but these young poets were not prepared to accept
the Soviet conditions of publication that generations of writers before them
had tried to negotiate. The Thaw failed to change the Soviet literary world in
any radical way, and now disappointed young poets were no longer content
to toe the line, or, like the generation before them, to confine themselves
to testing the boundaries of Soviet censorship. It seems likely that they
demanded publication in part because they were rather naïve about what
they thought they could achieve, as Semenov insinuated, but also because
they felt that by doing so they were refusing to recognise the legitimacy of
the existing system. Semenov and others within the literary establishment
must have understood this position, but did not openly acknowledge it in
these terms. Shneiderman, who was older than Krivulin and the others,
though well acquainted with them, comments of this meeting: ‘Thus the
generation of then 30-somethings was relieved of its illusions; my genera-

tion, of course, had been cured of those a long time before.’111 The unof-
ficial writers did not entirely relinquish their desire for Soviet publication,
however, as the project Lepta (A mite) would demonstrate.
Lepta was the name given to an almanac of poetry compiled in the hope
that it would be published officially. The idea of producing it was inspired by
the success of unofficial artists in gaining recognition for themselves when
in 1974 the authorities, under pressure at home and from abroad, allowed
unofficial artists to hold exhibitions in Moscow and Leningrad, and thus
acknowledged the existence of non-conformist art in the USSR.112 The
Leningrad exhibition was held in December 1974, and allowed to continue
for four days.113 It was, according to Shneiderman, a great encouragement to
unofficial writers in the city, and inspired the idea of the anthology Lepta,
which was conceived of and produced in 1975. The collection contained
poetry by writers who had had little or none of their work published. The
editors Yuliya Voznesenskaya (b. 1940), Boris Ivanov, Viktor Krivulin,
Konstantin Kuz'minsky, and Evgeny Pazukhin planned to ask the Writers’
Union to recommend its publication, and stipulated that they expected
no payment in return: hence its title, which means ‘a mite’ in the Biblical
sense of an offering from somebody, however poor. Editorial work began
in February, and that month, too, a letter was sent to the Writers’ Union.
The selection process took into account the aim of publishing the anthol-
ogy, so certain constraints were imposed upon the material: no anti-Soviet
sentiments, religious themes, or erotic imagery was allowed; and no work
by writers who had emigrated or who were in trouble with the authorities.
Having considered these criteria, and after much discussion, argument,
and revision, the final version of the anthology was agreed; it included
111 Shneiderman, ‘Puti legalizatsii’, p. 199.

112 The exhibitions were permitted after the embarrassment of the ‘bulldozer exhibition’
of unofficial art in Moscow on 15 September 1974, so called because the authorities
physically destroyed it with the help of bulldozers in front of the cameras of foreign
journalists.
113 Eduard Shneiderman, ‘Chto ya izdaval, v chem uchastvoval’, in Samizdat, pp. 46–57
(p. 51).
128 Chapter 2
the work of thirty-two poets.114 Lepta was now ready to be submitted to

the Writers’ Union, but the poets had still not received a reply to their
letter sent in February. A further letter failed to elicit a reply, and so in the
middle of April they submitted the manuscript to the chief editor of
the publishing house Sovetskii pisatel', Anatoly Chepurov. At that time,
the unofficial poets did not realise that a decision had been taken by the
Writers’ Union long before the manuscript got anywhere near the review-
ers, and they stood no chance of being published.
On 6 March the Secretariat of the Writers’ Union had discussed
the original letter that the unofficial poets had sent regarding Lepta. The
Secretariat was against having anything to do with the anthology, and
decided it was better not to reply to the letter.115 In order that they might
distance themselves from the affair altogether, the matter was passed on to
the Committee for Work with Young Writers, and thence passed around
from person to person until it finally fizzled out. Chepurov was surprised,
therefore, when he nevertheless received the manuscript for consideration
by Sovetskii pisatel'. He sent it on for review, as procedure required, to
three poets: Maya Borisova, Viktor Sosnora, and Gleb Gorbovsky, whom
the compilers had requested as internal reviewers. To Chepurov’s surprise
and probably dismay, Borisova praised Lepta and recommended it for
publication.116 Sosnora also declared that the poets should be published,
and gave a brief description of the literary influences he discerned in each
poet’s work.117 Sosnora understood, and to some degree sympathised with
the attitude of the authorities, however, whose principal objection to the
proposed manuscript was not concerned with its content so much as its
114 The contents of Lepta can be found in Marco Sabbatini, ‘Quel che si metteva in rima’:
Cultura e Poesia Underground a Leningado (Salerno: Europa Orientalis, 2008),
pp. 412–21.
115 Ibid., p. 53.
116 Maya Borisova’s review seems to be missing from the Writers’ Union archive.
Information on its contents from Eduard Shneiderman, interview with the author,
tape recording, St Petersburg, 26 April 2003.
117 Blue Lagoon Anthology, vol. 4, pp. 445–7. Kuz'minsky interprets his comments as
intended to thwart publication of the collection.
form: that the young poets were presuming far too much in compiling
and editing a whole collection of poetry themselves, rather than applying
individually for inclusion in a Soviet-edited publication.118 Well aware
of the position that the Writers’ Union had adopted over the anthology,
Chepurov proceeded to pass Lepta on to P. S. Vykhodtsev, a solid Socialist
Realist who could be relied upon to give it a bad review.119 This he duly
did, insulting the collection as a whole and each contributor individually.
Vykhodtsev condemned the anthology as full of anti-Soviet feelings, and
the editor was able to hand back the manuscript to its authors. The col-
lection was never published.120
Lepta was an important moment in the history of unofficial litera-
ture. During the process of compilation, Yuliya Voznesenskaya’s apartment
became a meeting place for poets and writers, and this brought together dis-
parate groups which had hitherto known little about each other. Readings
took place regularly during this period both at Voznesenskaya’s, and in art-
ists’ studios in the city. Acting as a cohesive force for the unofficial move-
ment, Lepta was in many ways the beginning of the underground that grew
in numbers and strength in the second half of the 1970s and 1980s. It is
worth noting the extent to which the organisation of the editorial board
and processes mirrored official literature: this points to how far the unof-
ficial writers of the 1970s replaced participation in bureaucratic, official
literature with equivalent, equally bureaucratic bodies and procedures of
their own. This characteristic was true of Club 81 later on as well.
In early 1976, not long after Lepta had been rejected, the first samizdat
journals appeared in Leningrad. First came the journal 37, which was pro-
duced by Viktor Krivulin, Tat'yana Goricheva and others, and then Chasy
(Hours), produced by Boris Ivanov with the help of Yuliya Voznesenskaya.121
These and other journals and almanacs played a huge role in Leningrad
unofficial literature and culture over the coming fifteen years. Although
118 Sosnora, interview, 21 May 2003.

119 It should be noted that Vykhodtsev was not a poet of any note, but rather a mediocre
member of the Writers’ Union whose work has now been forgotten.
120 Shneiderman, ‘Puti legalizatsii’, p. 199.
121 Dolinin, ‘Nepodtsenzurnaya literatura’, p. 14.
130 Chapter 2
in 1981 a part of the underground culture received official recognition

with the formation of ‘Club 81’ and the eventual publication of the club’s
work, Krug,122 the production of samizdat journals which began after Lepta
remained the fundamental activity of unofficial culture within the USSR
until 1991.
122 Krug: Literaturnyi al'manakh, ed. by B. Ivanov and Yu. Novikov (Leningrad: Sovetskii
pisatel', 1985).
Part 2
Chapter 3
Officially Published Poetry and Aleksandr Kushner
Much of the poetry officially published in Leningrad was written with the
aim of satisfying politically-motivated criteria. Although, as a consequence,
it often has little literary merit,1 this body of work is nonetheless impor-
tant historically because it was the background against which the young
poets described in the preceding chapters developed. It set the standard
and model that was expected of them: some conformed to it, while others
chose to flout its conventions. In order to understand the ways that certain
individuals responded to the norms of Socialist Realism, we must first have
a picture of the standard poems published month after month in the thick
journals: of their typical forms, subjects, and language. This chapter begins
with a description of the norms Soviet published poetry at the beginning
of the 1960s and the 1970s, illustrated by poems chosen from various pub-
lications.2 Having established these norms, it goes on to examine the work
of one poet who wrote genuine literature within the constraints of official
publishing, Aleksandr Kushner. Kushner is the most famous of the several
poets who worked within the Soviet system in Leningrad. His work is tes-
tament to the fact that although Socialist Realism distorted the literary
process grotesquely – and excluded to a greater or lesser degree the work
of major poets such as Sosnora, Bobyshev and Brodsky – for some writers
it was still possible to work within its boundaries.
1 In explaining the nature of much official literature in the USSR, G. S. Smith has
made a useful comparison between professional Soviet poets and copywriters. See
‘Russian Poetry since 1945’, p. 198.
2 Approximately five hundred poems were surveyed to elicit these norms. The poems
were taken from Neva 1955–1975; Zvezda 1951–1975; Den' poezii 1962–1975; and
Molodoi Leningrad 1956–1975.
134 Chapter 3
Poetry Published during the Thaw
When Stalin died in March 1953, the political situation in the Soviet Union
began to change rapidly. Partly, if not principally as a reflection of current
politics, Soviet literature also began to change at this point. The most obvi-
ous change in published poetry, as in all Soviet literature, was that Stalin
soon disappeared as a subject. Mourning poems expressing public, collective
grief filled the journals in April 1953, and then he vanished. Other changes
took place more slowly, over a period of several years, which meant that by
the early 1960s, the corpus of poetry being published in official journals
was very different from that of a decade before.
During the Thaw, the range of themes in published poetry became
more diverse than they had been in the previous, Stalinist period. This
seems partly to have been a result of a broader range of poets publishing
their work in the journals, partly the effect of the political liberation, and
partly because there were, quite simply, more poets being published by this
time in Leningrad. The journal Neva, set up in 1955, featured more poetry
by a wider range of poets than the older Zvezda; and once many more poets
had been admitted to the Writers’ Union after the Congress of the Union
in 1954, there were more submissions for editors to choose from. A picture
of the themes standard for Leningrad Socialist Realist poetry during the
Thaw, elicited from the poems themselves, is wider-ranging than that for
the Stalin period, but still not very long; the following is fairly exhaustive:
nature; the seasons, and especially spring; the great future ahead; poetry
itself – as comfort, and food for the soul; romantic love; travel within the
USSR and sometimes abroad; motherhood; the Great Patriotic War, and
the threat of a nuclear war in the future; technology; and finally, the city
of Leningrad.
The significance of this list is not only what is included in it, but also
what is excluded from it – what Soviet writers referred to as the figure of
paralipsis (figura umolchaniya). There is no mention, for example, of dis-
satisfaction in society, no criticism of Soviet power, no reference to despair
or serious doubt in oneself or one’s society, no envy (of others in Soviet
society or of the West), and no graphic references to the horrors of the

Great Patriotic War inflicted both by and on the USSR. If the past ever
compares favourably with the present, it is only because of nostalgia; essen-
tially the present is always an improvement on what has gone before, and
a poet cannot criticise any part of the modern Soviet world except insofar
as that criticism is levelled at his or her own failings within it. Although
a poem may describe a personal difficulty or struggle, it is always resolved
by the end of the piece.3 Any reference to love is necessarily romantic, not
physical or erotic.
M. L. Gasparov succinctly summarised the Socialist Realist attitude
to verse-craft:
Simplicity, normality, and freedom from complex historical–cultural associations
are understood to be highly worthy; straying from these qualities is condemned as
formalism.4
While formal features of verse were greatly diminished in significance

by this attitude, strict form in verse was still considered to be essential,
and lack of it was branded as a symptom of ‘Western decadence’. After
1935, syllabo-tonic metres were predominant: they were considered, on
the whole, to be free of specific historical associations, so they could be
used neutrally without provoking accusations of formalizm. The only non-
classical metre to remain canonical was the dol'nik. Even in the 1950s,
more unusual metres were very rarely used in published Soviet poetry;
imitations of classical Greek and Roman metres and the sonnet form, for
example, were studiously avoided by Soviet poets except in translations.
This conservatism produced a great degree of metrical conformity within
Soviet published poetry, and even though in the 1950s and 1960s poets like
Rozhdestvensky, Voznesensky, and Sosnora did begin to experiment more
3 This is an important aspect of Clark’s masterplot, where the resolution of a difficulty

is a key plot element and facilitates the passing of the baton of communism from the
older to the younger generation. Although lyric poetry does not adhere to all the
prescribed elements of the masterplot, it does feature this aspect. Katerina Clark,
The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1981).
4 M. L. Gasparov, Ocherk istorii russkogo stikha (Moscow: Nauka, 1984), p. 258.
136 Chapter 3
with non-classical metres, they remained in a minority. Most poems were

written in iambic and trochaic metres, with some using the more varied
dol'nik; for the most part they use alternating masculine and feminine
rhyme, and are arranged in quatrains.
What such conservative verse form in Soviet published poetry demon-
strated was, first of all, a poet’s acceptance of the political control implied
in the Socialist Realist ‘method’. It also illustrated the technical skill and
craftsmanship of the poet, which was a prized, concrete and measurable
quality of artistic creation. As well as use of metre, this ‘craft’ is manifested
in the high proportion of exact, often grammatical, rhymes, which avoid
any risk of being branded ‘obscure’, and often contribute to a banal and
sing-song intonation. Sophisticated features of verse-craft like enjambment
and metrical variation are significantly rare. Instead, the coincidence of
syntactic breaks with line and stanza ends, and the limited range of the
metrical line ensure verse that is ‘accurate’, simple, and easy to read. This
is important, because Socialist Realist literature was not written for the
intellectual elite, but for mass consumption.
The ‘message’ of most of the published poems of the Thaw remained
essentially the same as it was during the Stalin period – the expression of
optimism, Party spirit ( partiinost' ), ideological correctness (ideinost' ), and
folk ethos (narodnost' ). But the reintroduction of lyricism that the Thaw
witnessed is noticeable: there is a great increase in the number of essen-
tially lyrical poems. Although the personae of many are still model Soviet
citizens, the experience which they describe is more private than public.
A poem published by Valentin Popov in 1961, ‘Veter s zapakhom landy-
shei’ (A wind with the scent of lily-of-the-valley), for example, describes
a realisation that a childhood ideal was not realistic.5 As a child, the poet
envied railway-carriage attendants their opportunities to travel widely,
but when, as an adult, he encounters one in person, he is disappointed by
the attendant’s lack of imagination. The poem contrasts the mundane car-
riage attendant, who sees everything in practical terms, with the dreamer
(fantazer) who sees the world in poetic terms and dreams of the then very
5 Valentin Popov, ‘Veter s zapakhom landyshei’, Neva 10 (1961), p. 52.

fashionable subject of space exploration and travel. It is quite a contrast to

the Party-led, monolithic representation of life in Stalin-era literature, and
such a move towards more imagination and artistic freedom is reflected in
a significant number of poems from the Thaw.
ВЕТЕР С ЗАПАХОМ ЛАНДЫШЕЙ
У меня к дорогам с детства любовь,

Особенно к дальним рейсам:
Лететь среди разнотравных лугов,
На мосту грохотать по рельсам.
За окном то аул, то село, то река …

Я с детства завидовал проводникам.
На разъездах прыгать на рыжий откос,
Покупать чернику на станциях.
Там кого-то встречают, не пряча слез,
Провожают кого-то с танцами.
На большом перегоне, за узкой рекой,

Лесорубам кричать из тамбура,
Заметить цыган и махать рукой
Гадалкам грустного табора.
Паровоз паровозы встречают гудком,

Ночью искры летят над вагонами …
Я стою и беседую с проводником,
Глядя на звезды зеленые.
О крупной Веге завел разговор:

«Вдруг там люди живут в созвездиях».
Он ответил: «А вы, видать, фантaзер,
Мы пока что туда не ездили».
138 Chapter 3
Я спустился к земле, где березам трава

Мочит росами ноги голые …
Он серьезно заметил: «Сухие дрова» –
Про ельник, пропахший смолами.
И, двери закрыв, назвал сквозняком

ветер с запахом ландышей …
Зачем ты работаешь проводником?
Сторожем шел бы на кладбище.
Пожалуй, напрасно я с детских лет

Таким вот, как ты, завидовал:
Колесит человек по красивой земле–
И ни черта не видывал.
Я считаю это ужасной бедой,

Сколько, люди, потеряно вами!
Представляете: Волгу назвать водой,
Корабельную рощу – дровами!
A wind with the scent of lily-of-the-valley
Since childhood I have had a love of railways,/ especially long-distance routes:/ to

fly through fields of different grasses,/ rumble over the tracks on a bridge.// Out the
window there’s a mountain hamlet, a village, a river …/ Since childhood I’ve envied
carriage attendants./ Jumping on to the red slopes at sidings,/ buying bilberries at sta-
tions./ Here people meet someone and don’t hide their tears,/ here they accompany
someone off with dancing.// At a major intersection, over a small river,/ to shout to
the lumberjacks from the platform,/ See the gypsies and wave/ to the fortune-tellers
of the sad encampment.// The engine greets other engines with a whistle,/ at night
sparks fly above the carriages …/ I stand and chat with the carriage attendant,/ gazing
at the green stars.// I started talking about the great Vega,/ ‘what if people live there
in the stars?’/ He answered, ‘You obviously are a dreamer,/ we haven’t managed to
get there yet.’// I climbed down to the ground where the grass was wetting the bare
legs of the birch trees with dew …/ He said in all seriousness ‘Dry wood’ –/ when
he saw a fir tree scented with resin.// And he closed the door and said that a breeze
with the scent-of-lily-of-the-valley was a draught …/ Why do you work as a carriage
attendant?/ You might as well be watchman at a cemetery.// I have envied people
like you since I was a child in vain:/ a person criss-crosses this beautiful world,/ and
doesn’t notice a thing.// I consider it a dreadful shame,/ how much, people, you lose!/
Imagine calling the Volga ‘water’,/ and a grove of birch masts ‘firewood’!
The metre of this poem (dol'nik tetrameter alternating with trimeter)

was Mayakovsky’s signature metre, and Popov’s use of it here is typical of the
interest in the dol'nik’s varied rhythm, and alternations within metre, which
increased over the Thaw. An increase in formal experimentation and variation
came about after 1953 in part because the ‘classical’ metres had been ‘worn
out’ by the reams of Socialist Realist poetry composed in them during the
Stalin period, and poets needed more scope in verse form if they were to go
on producing new Soviet poetry. In this poem, the notable attention to form
is balanced by the fact that the metre is ‘Mayakovskian’, which would have
provided the poem with important credentials necessary for publication.
Popov’s poem demonstrates a number of other departures from the
Stalinist style of poetry. Significantly, it criticises the railway attendant; criti-
cism of anybody other than officially disapproved-of nationalities or social
groups was rare a decade earlier, and would have had to have been provoked
by a more serious offence than philistinism. It also expresses the poet’s rejec-
tion of his childhood ideal, which is part of a general trend in the poetry of
this period to dissociate the present from the past, and to assert the modern
USSR as a fresh and new world which has significantly moved on from the
Stalin years. As Sergey Zav'yalov has noted, during the Thaw there was a
move from the ‘grand style’ of Stalinism, which never made specific refer-
ences to a time, to a specifically contemporary picture of life.6 In the 1960s,
references to the previous generation often serve to put the present into
relief against the recent past, and if this involved the criticism of members
of the older generation, then criticism was permitted; sometimes this was
even of a father figure, so revered in Stalin-era Socialist Realism.
A poem published together with Popov’s poem, Grigory Korin’s ‘Otets’
(‘Father’), expresses a similar conscious realisation of the difference between
the past and present.7 It describes how the poet was beaten by his father for
6 Sergey Zav'yalov, ‘Kontsept “sovremennosti” i kategoriya vremeni’, p. 30.

7 Grigory Korin, ‘Otets’, Neva 10 (1961), p. 53.
140 Chapter 3
being rebellious, and was always in conflict with him, but by doing things
‘his own way’, the poet has managed to move on from the life that his father
led. Korin’s persona does not condemn his father for his behaviour, but
he indicates that it belongs to the past now, and that it is connected to his
illiteracy and the ignorance associated with this. The poet is able both to
understand that his father was right in his own way, and yet to move on
from the life his father has led:
Я делал все по-своему,

Делал отцу вопреки,
Вопреки беспощадному поясу
И тяжести плоской руки.
Его правоты отцовской

Не понимал я, малец.
А он, длинорукий и жесткий,
Безграмотным был, мой отец.
I did everything my way,/ in spite of my father,/ in spite of the merciless strap/ and
the weight of his flat hand.// I, a young boy, didn’t understand his fatherly rightness./
He, long-armed and cruel,/ was illiterate, my father.
This sentiment echoes the rhetoric of the Thaw, which acknowledged that
the past had had its problems during the period of the ‘cult of personality’,
but still saw the future as the promised land of communism.
Another significant aspect of the poetry of the Thaw, in accordance with
the Party instruction given at the 1954 Congress of the Writers’ Union, was
that poets began to endorse a more artistic and less obviously practical or
political world-view. Certain subjects are commonly prettified and romanti-
cised, such as the Russian village, provincial regions of the USSR, poets and
poetry, and, very popularly, the natural world. Pavel Kustov’s poem ‘Nashykh
dnei chelovek’ (‘A person of our time’) is specifically concerned with the
imaginative vision that a modern Soviet citizen ought to have of life:8
8 Pavel Kustov, ‘Nashikh dnei chelovek’, Neva 10 (1961), p. 5.

НАШИХ ДНЕЙ ЧЕЛОВЕК
Под степным бледно-синим небом,

Где подчас островком – завод,
Не одним лишь насущным хлебом
Человек в наши дни живет.
Он, конечно, про день вчерашний,

Когда все голодали мы,
Помнит крепко, заняв под пашни
Даже впадины и холмы.
И в полях, коим нет границы,

Все бугры и плешины смыв,
Яровая шумит пшеница,
Что с июля пошла в налив.
Встали яблони ряд за рядом.

Зеленеет бахча у рек.
Но не только хозяйским взглядом
Смотрит нынешний человек
На степное то изобилье,
На дубравы и поймы, – нет.
У него появились крылья,
Он художник и он поэт!
И в безбрежности этой синей

Он увидит, душою взмыв,
Праздник света, цветов и линий
И для песни найдет мотив.
142 Chapter 3
A person of our time
Under the pale blue steppe sky/ where sometimes, like an island, there’s a factory,/ a
person in our times lives on more than his daily bread./ Of course as he ploughs even
the hills and hollows, his memory of yesterday when we were starving is strong.//
And in boundless fields/ where bumps and bare patches have been cleared,/ the
spring wheat that ripened in July rustles.// Apple trees have risen, row after row./
The melon fields grow green by the river./ But a person today looks not only with a
farmer’s eye// at the abundance of the steppe,/ the oak woods and the flood plains,
no./ He has grown wings,/ he is an artist and a poet!// And in the vastness of this
blue/ he will see, as his soul soars upwards,/ the celebration of the world, of colours
and lines,/ and he will find the tune for a song.
Both thematically and formally the poem endorses a degree of independ-

ence and individuality in life. It argues that life is no longer a struggle for
subsistence, because the new material wealth of the USSR means that
people can now afford to turn their attention to loftier things, like paint-
ing and writing poetry. Kustov is particularly careful to emphasise the
balance that people should strike between remembering and forgetting
the privations of the past which had been part of the struggle to build
communism; they were to be respected and revered, but not dwelt upon.
Instead, the Soviet citizen, whose ‘wings have grown’ (a metaphor in the
spirit of Khrushchev’s promise that the 1960s generation would live to
see communism realised in the USSR) should celebrate the abundance of
the harvest earned through past sacrifices, and begin to conceive of life in
more artistic terms.
This newly romanticised representation of life in the poetry of the
1960s reflects the contemporary enthusiasm for geology, expeditions, and
travel that had became popular among young people during the Thaw: these
romantic pursuits offered a chance to escape the overseeing authorities
that were ubiquitous in Soviet urban life. Their popularity may also have
been partly a reaction to the material comforts and leisure activities first
introduced during the post-war Stalin years.9 Boym suggests that desire to
9 See Genis and Vail', 60-e. Mir sovetskogo cheloveka and Vera Dunham, In Stalin’s Time
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976).
escape this bourgeois comfort, which she calls an ‘invective against poshlost' ’
(vulgarity), was part of the younger generation’s anti-Stalinism.10 Lyric
poetry and the songs of the bards echoed this reaction to the recent past
by replacing the heavily politicised literature of the 1930s and 1940s with
romanticism and idealism.
All this is not to say that the ‘message’ in Soviet poetry published
during the 1960s was necessarily less political than the ideological works
of Stalin-era Socialist Realism, but the vocabulary used in the poetry is
notably de-politicised, with ideological messages in these poems often
disguised in lofty metaphors. The de-politicisation of vocabulary is found
most often in poems published in the middle of journals, rather than in
the opening selections; these poems are where the boundaries of Socialist
Realism are extended furthest. Poems in the collections Den' poezii and
Molodoi Leningrad are less political still than those in the ‘thick’ journals,
because of the narrower, more specifically literary readership for which
they were published.
A significant part of the development of poetry during this period, as
identified by Gillespie,11 is that women’s literature emerged as a new and
important concern. In the early 1950s there were very few women poets
published (Panova, Inber, Berggol'ts, Polyakova and Gnedich are some of
the best known), but there was a broader range of women poets published
during the Thaw. This does not mean that relatively more poetry by women
was published.12 The themes and issues of women’s poetry had changed,
however; they had become more self-consciously ‘women’s’, and differed
from ‘men’s themes’.13 This change is probably linked to the general move-
10 Boym, Common Places, p. 64.

11 Gillespie, ‘Thaws, Freezes, and Wakes’, p. 61.
12 From my survey of Leningrad journals, I found that in the period 1950–3 the pro-
portion of poems by men and women was 91 per cent to 9 per cent; ten years later,
1960–3, they were 88 per cent to 12 per cent.
13 By contrast, Kelly describes how in Stalinist Socialist Realism, ‘(t)he declaration of
equality for women’ meant that ‘(a)ll writers, men and women alike, were to produce
plain tales, simply told, which celebrated the participation of women in industry and
agriculture’, in A History of Russian Women’s Writing pp. 245–6.
144 Chapter 3
ment in poetry from the public to the private sphere, since women’s writing
is traditionally associated with private experience. It was also a response to
Party instruction which, as we have seen, indicated in 1954 that women’s
writing should address what were deemed to be women’s concerns. A col-
lection of poetry published in 1962 in Neva was specifically identified as
women’s poetry by its title, ‘Sovremennitsy’ (Contemporary women), and
gives some idea of the themes, forms, and style of women’s poetry during
the Thaw.14
The first poem in the collection is a typically politicised ‘opening poem’,
referred to by Soviet poets as the ‘lokomotiv’ or ‘paravoz’: the steam engine
that pulled the collection past the censors. By contrast, the second, enti-
tled ‘Lunnyi kamen'’ (‘Moonstone’), is lyrical.15 The persona demands a
moonstone to be brought to her in the way a princess in a fairytale might
command princes to perform heroic feats for her; her moonstone crystal
ball belongs to the female traditions of fortune-telling and witchcraft. The
folkloric tone and images in this poem invoke a romanticised, de-politicised,
and literary representation of femininity which, in the 1940s and early 1950s,
would not have been acceptable. The Thaw’s endorsement of traditional,
rather than purely Soviet images of women gave poets such as Kamennaya
a lot more scope for self-representation in poetry, however stereotypical:
ЛУННЫЙ КАМЕНЬ
Привези мне
Лунный камень,
Настоящий лунный камень,
Не затроганный руками.
Привези!
Буду я
В него глядеться
И покажется, что в детстве,
14 ‘Sovremennitsy’, Zvezda 3 (1962), pp. 87–9.

15 Galina Kamennaya, ‘Lunnyi kamen'’, ibid., p. 87.
В синем, синем
Небе детства
Кружатся стрижи.
Пусть веками
Не заласкан,
Вновь родится облик сказки,
Древней сказки,
Юной сказки
О любви.
Привези мне
Лунный камень,
Не затроганный руками,
Привези!
Moonstone
Bring me/ a moonstone,/ a real moonstone,/ that’s never been touched by hands./
Bring it!/ I shall/ stare into it,/ and it will seem as though in childhood,/ in the
blue, blue/ sky of childhood,/ the swifts are circling./ Though it may not have been
cherished for centuries,/ the form of the fairytale will be reborn,/ an ancient tale,/
a young tale/ about love.// Bring me/ a moonstone,/ that’s never been touched by
human hands,/ bring it!
The metre of this poem (T4442) evokes folk poetry, creating this
stylisation with loose rhymes and repetition. Such an imitation illustrates
again the broadening of acceptable verse forms which occurred during
the Thaw. The political constraints upon poetry have clearly been relaxed
by this time: although this poem’s deliberate imitation of folk poetry is
expressive of the ideal of narodnost', it does not demonstrate ideological
correctness or Party spirit.
Another ‘sovremennitsa’, Tamara Nikitina, gives a more conserva-
tively Socialist Realist representation of women, but nevertheless images
of women, and not men, are predominant. Her poem ‘Sestra’ (‘Sister’) is
about a nurse who is on duty at night and cannot sleep in the oppressive
146 Chapter 3
quiet of the hospital.16 The humble nature of the nurse and her work is
emphasised in the poem, which explains that the rewarding results of the
job are sufficient ‘payment’ for her services: such a self-effacing representa-
tion of a woman is typical for Socialist Realism. Alone and oppressed by the
silence of the hospital at night, the figure of the nurse becomes an idealised
image of womanhood: self-effacing, tender, conscientious, self-reliant, and
serving. This is entirely consistent with Vurgun’s prescription of 1954.
By the mid-1950s, the forms and themes of post-war Socialist Realist
poetry had run dry, and the political Thaw had enabled new experimenta-
tion to reinvigorate published poetry. Certain trends can be identified over
the period, which give an impression of the shape of the changes which
occurred in this poetry. In particular, the civic tone of Stalinist poetry gave
way to the more lyrical, and less didactic tone of the Thaw, and the concerns
of poetry shift from the public to the private sphere. Formally, poets became
more experimental, especially in their use of metre, and the range of stylistic
register in the poems did increase somewhat. In particular, a higher-style
and poetic register became more acceptable within Socialist Realism, and
consequently poets were able to become self-consciously artistic in their
representation of the world. The significant number of poems published
at this time which attempt to define the concerns of the 1960s seems to be
a reflection of the anxiety of the Khrushchev period and its programme of
de-Stalinization to distance the present from the recent past.
After the Thaw
Towards the end of the 1960s, there was a shift in the tone of official poetry
which, broadly speaking, might be expressed as the replacement of the
‘spirit’ of Thaw literature – so often defined as ‘a search’ in literature – with
a tendency to write on established, sure-fire, central themes of Socialist
16 Tamara Nikitina, ‘Sestra’, ibid., p. 88.

Realism. New poets publishing in the Leningrad thick journals of the

1970s were not particularly concerned to push poetry beyond its narrow
Soviet parameters.17 Although slow, incremental changes in published
literature continued insofar as poetry kept pace with broader changes in
Soviet society (for example, the image of women gradually changed), a
survey of poetry published in Leningrad at the beginning of the 1970s at
once suggests that the trajectory towards liberalisation and the proliferation
of themes and forms had slowed. The poems are as regular and conserva-
tive as those of the Thaw, and delicate subjects such as the complexities
of the relationship of the present to the Stalinist past, and the difficulties
of coping with post-war life, have disappeared. The Thaw’s characteristic
endorsement of an individual and artistic appreciation of the world has
also disappeared.
In 1970, the twenty-fifth anniversary of victory in the Great Patriotic
War prompted a huge increase in the number of poems commemorating it.
Throughout the year, and well into 1971, every issue of the ‘thick’ journals
was dominated by poetry, and other literature, on this theme. Although
by this time the Great Patriotic War was beginning to recede into history,
Soviet poets had to write new poems on the subject. With few exceptions,
they did so by composing artificially fresh and vivid evocations of the war
twenty-five years on: poems which sound as though they were written
during or just after the war, because they create a sense of immediacy of
experience and feeling as if it had all happened yesterday. The most nota-
ble way in which poetry about the war from this period achieves this is
through the use of bleak and deliberately emotive imagery of the aftermath
of the war, especially of the destruction of homes and families in Russia.
Aleksandr Churkin’s poem ‘Pesnya o soldate’ (‘Song of a soldier’) is good
example of this.18 It is a blatant reworking of Mikhail Isakovsky’s ‘Vragi
sozhgli rodnuyu khatu’ (‘The enemy burnt his family hut’), written in 1945
17 This was not true for all Soviet literature of the time. I am grateful to Andrei Zorin
for pointing out that in Moscow, far more interesting and talented prose works were
published in the 1970s than had appeared in the 1960s.
18 Aleksandr Churkin, ‘Pesnya o soldate’, Zvezda 9 (1971), p. 41.
148 Chapter 3
but banned during the Stalin period. It concentrates not on the action at
the front, but on the aftermath of the war, when the soldier returns home.
Although the devastation of the soldier’s home is the chief subject, Churkin
manages to add the essential message of optimism at the end:
ПЕСНЯ О СОЛДАТЕ
Враг отходил на Запад с боем

И все живое убивал.
Солдат пришел в село родное
И ничего здесь не узнал.
Поникли белые березки,

Что зеленели вдоль села.
И там, где дом стоял отцовский,–
Лишь тoлько пепел да зола.
Что сердцу дорого и свято,

Все враг пожег и разорил,
Погибла вся семья солдата,
И не найти родных могил.
Слеза суровая, скупая,

Лицо солдата обожгла.
Нет, не простит земля родная,
Нет, не простит такого зла.
На пепелище на отцовском
Солдат построил новый дом,
Весною белая березка
Шумит, как прежде, под окном.
Song of a soldier
The enemy had made a fighting retreat westwards,/ killing everything alive./ A soldier
arrived in his native village/ and recognised nothing.// The white bindweed once
green along the edge of the village has drooped./ And in the place where his father’s
house once stood,/ there’s only dust and ashes.// Everything dear to the heart and
holy/ had been destroyed and burnt by the enemy./ All the soldier’s family had died,/
and their graves will never be found.// A severe and silent tear/ burned the soldier’s
cheek./ No, his native soil will never forgive,/ never forgive such evil.// On the ashes
of his father’s home,/ the soldier built his new house,/ in the spring the white birch
tree/ rustles, as before, under the window.
Words and images used in the poem are simple and clichéd. They
function as metonymic devices to invoke the well-established, banal, ‘offi-
cial’ representation of Russia which was propagated across a range of art
forms, including film, painting, prose, and song. The dichotomy between
‘us’ and ‘them’ is repeated and reinforced throughout: the soldier’s home in
the past and its ruins after the war; the soldier’s love and reverence for his
home and its destruction and the death of his family; the soldier’s burning
tear and the enemy’s evil. Rather than exploring the complicated reality
of post-war life, the poem simplifies the soldier’s plight to such an extent
that it bears no relation to reality.
Poems about the war served as a way of propagating national awareness,
fear of attack, and mistrust of Western Europe, and thereby perpetuating
a ‘siege mentality’ within the USSR. Yet others, that make no reference
to the war or its privations, rarely suggest that the USSR is separate from
the rest of the world. Rather, the blithely positive images and sentiments
which we have found to be typical of Soviet poetry hitherto are still very
much in force. Anatoly Krasnov’s poem ‘Ya slyshu zvon kosy’ (‘I hear the
ringing of the scythe’), for example, expresses a desire to unite the world
in peace.19 The poem presents the kind of romanticised view of the world
which was established as acceptable in poetry during the Thaw, with its
representation of dew as pearls, the idyllic rural scene of mowing, and the
persona’s anthropomorphising description of the bird’s flight:
19 Anatoly Krasnov, ‘Ya slyshu zvon kosy’, Neva 7 (1972), p. 74.

150 Chapter 3
Я СЛЫШУ ЗВОН КОСЫ
Я слышу звон косы,

Я вижу:
Трава ложится под косою.
И влажный луг
Узорно вышит
Не жемчугами,
А росою.
Я вижу:
Жаворонок бьется
В лучах веселого рассвета.
И словно вымпел вскинув солнце,
Плывет зеленая планета.
Мне снится
Радостная птица,
Что бьется в небе и томится.
Мне часто снится,
Часто снится
Что
все
Распаханы границы.
I hear the ringing of the scythe
I hear the ringing of the scythe,/ I see:/ the grass falls beneath the scythe./ And the
damp meadow/ is embroidered/ not with pearls/ but with dew.// I see:/ the lark
flaps/ in the rays of the merry dawn./ And again the sun has thrown up its pennant,/
the green planet drifts.// I dream/ of a joyful bird,/ that flaps in the sky and grows
weary./ I often dream/ that all/ the borders have been ploughed up.
Unlike poems of the Thaw, however, there is nothing in this poem

which is identifiably a part of the contemporary USSR: all the images and
references are generalised, and the lyric voice is similarly depersonalised.
There is no sense of sincerity, as was found in the boldest of 1960s poetry.

Aleksandr Genis and Petr Vail' have identified the change in tone from the
1960s to the 1970s as a shift from the search for genuineness (iskrennost' ) to
cynicism – the feeling that it was fruitless even attempting to find genuine
meaning in life.20 The spirit of the 1960s has been lost, and the sense of
‘varnishing’ (lakirovka) that was so common in the 1940s and early 1950s is
creeping back. The poem’s formal properties emphasise ultra-conservatism
and submissive conformism.
During the Thaw, love was one of the themes which returned to Soviet
literature, and it was explored with some degree of openness; in the 1970s
we find that the theme is still acceptable for published poetry, but, as we
saw in the case of war poems, there is little room for complexity or the
exploration of ‘grey areas’. Love poems dating from the early 1970s are
generally shallow, and markedly trivial. Lev Kuklin’s ‘Zaklinanie’ (‘The
spell’) is a good example of this:21
ЗАКЛИНАНИЕ
Светлане
Неотвратимо,
как явленье
лета,
Неощутимо,
как давленье
света,
Она приходит, не спросив совета …
Но, как салют в честь узнаванья истин, –

На всех сиренях
вспыхивают кисти,
На всех деревьях
Благовéстят листья.
20 Genis and Vail', pp. 281–9.

21 Lev Kuklin, ‘Zaklinanie’, Den' poezii (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel', 1972), p. 189.
152 Chapter 3
И лампа, что горела вполнакала,

Вдруг – ровно в полночь – солнцем засверкала.
– Кто там стучится?
Я тебя искала …
Ее словам
я двери отворяю.
Ее правам
я слепо доверяю,
Как заклинание,
тихо повторяю:
Неощутимо,
как давленье
света,
Неотвратимо,
как явленье
лета,
Любовь пришла – и требует ответа!
The spell
To Svetlana
Inevitable, like the coming of summer,/ intangible, like the pressure of light,/ it arrives
without asking any counsel …// But like a salute in honour of seeing the truth,/ on
all the lilacs the buds are flaring up,/ on all the trees there leaves ringing.// And the
lamp that had been burning at half wick,/ suddenly, right on midnight, shines out
like the sun./ ‘Who is that knocking?’/ ‘I’ve been looking for you.’// I open the door
to her words./ I blindly believe in her rules,/ like a spell I quietly repeat:/ Intangible,
like the pressure of light,/ inevitable, like the coming of summer,/ love has arrived
– and is demanding an answer!
Kuklin begins with a mysterious-sounding attempt to characterise a spell

he is under. The poem inches along slowly, and creates an exaggerated
sense of anticipation; this is built upon in the second stanza with images
of signals in the world which the persona interprets as symbolic. The final
revelation, that this ‘spell’ is none other than love, confirms the light-hearted
and sugary tone of the poem as a whole. Clearly, despite its Tsvetaeva-like
features, this is not a serious meditation on the theme.
Natal'ya Bord plays with the conventional, lyric treatment of love
when she evokes the traditional, one might say ‘Akhmatovan’ persona of
a girl disappointed in love in her poem ‘Ya dumala, chto bez tebya umru’
(‘I thought that I would die without you’):22
Я думала, что без тебя умру …

Но замечаю в сердце ту же пылкость
и ту же нежность тянущихся рук
к другому золотистому затылку.
И после телефонного звонка

бегу стремглав на взбалмошную встречу,
шепчу у седоватого виска
свои опустошающие речи.
Измены из черемух, из снегов,

выходит то ли юность, то ли жалость …
Наверно, ты похож лишь на него,
которого любить мне предвещалось? …
I thought that I would die without you …/ But I notice in my heart the same pas-
sion/ and the same tenderness of outstretched arms/ towards another golden head.//
And after a telephone call/ I run headfirst to the flighty rendezvous,/ I whisper to a
greying temple/ my devastating words.// Betrayals are made of bird-cherry blossom,
of snow,/ it turns out that it’s either youth or pity …/ Probably you just look like the
one/ I’m destined to fall in love with.
The ellipsis at the end of the first line suggests there is a lot more which
could be said about the persona’s plight in the conventional vein of a lament.
Already in the second line, however, the conjunction ‘no’ (but) introduces
a refutation of the position stated in line 1, and the remainder of the poem
22 Natal'ya Bord, ‘Ya dumala, chto bez tebya umru …’, Den' poezii (Leningrad: Sovetskii
pisatel', 1972).
154 Chapter 3
builds up a description of how, in fact, the persona was not as desolate

without her interlocutor as she had expected. In the final stanza, she sends
up the traditional image of a lovelorn woman, and occupies a rational,
pragmatic position with regard to her experience instead.
Bord’s poem is interesting in the way that it counters the image of a weak,
subordinate woman vulnerable to the whims of a man. Even a decade earlier
such a declaration of independence might have been shocking, but now the
speaker’s mature and philosophical response to her situation reflects a down-
to-earth attitude associated with the image of modern and independent
women. She rejects the traditional lament of Russian women, and the posi-
tion of dependence on men which it implies, and presents instead a livelier
alternative in which she quickly moves on from one relationship to other
liaisons, trying out different lovers before she finds the right one. It represents
a development of the trend we saw in the Thaw for poems by women and
about women in the Soviet press, and is an example of how in the 1970s some
elements of poetry changed to reflect broader changes in society.
This survey suggests that, in the 1970s, official poetry retained many
characteristics which had become associated with it during the Thaw, but
lost the impetus it had had to push the political and aesthetic boundaries
of Socialist Realism. While from a historical and political distance this
change might seems slight, for Soviet readers who were accustomed to
reading between the lines in poems for the political and artistic position
of the poet, this would have been a marked change. It is expressed in the
vocabulary of the poems, which is more neutral and predictable than that of
‘youth literature’; in the form, which is as a rule less adventurous even than
during the Thaw; and in the paucity of themes outside the most canonical
and acceptable to the literary authorities, whose agenda had grown politi-
cally more conservative.
The above overview of Soviet published poetry is based on representa-
tive, typical poems found in the journals of the period. It is difficult to say
how many people paid such poems any attention, but it does seem likely
that they would have been dismissed by many discerning readers who were
looking for genuinely literary poetry. Yet not all published poetry was simi-
larly dismissed, of course: from 1953 onwards, the slow process of widen-
ing the range of poetry published including the publication of previously
banned figures, and also of members of the Union writing serious, literary
poems. The most significant official poet in Leningrad to emerge during
this period was Aleksandr Kushner. Though at times he struggled to have
his work passed by the censor – and he acknowledges the significant role
his editor, Kuz'michev played in getting many poems into print – he pub-
lished his work, not in a mangled, piecemeal form, such as was the case with
Sosnora, but almost fully. Relatively few poems remained unpublished in
the Soviet years,23 and in 1989 he could claim that ‘in those years I managed
to publish books that I am not ashamed of now.’24
Aleksandr Kushner
Aleksandr Kushner was born in Leningrad in 1936. He was educated at the

Herzen Pedagogical Institute and, as we have seen, attended the LITO at
the Mining Institute where he came under the tutelage of Gleb Semenov.
He was active in literary circles and was especially close to the literary
theorist and critic Lidiya Ginzburg, who was his mentor and the sponsor
of his career. Kushner qualified as a teacher, but also continued develop-
ing as a poet, and joined the Writers’ Union in 1966. Three years later, and
after ten years working as a school teacher, he left teaching and became a
full-time writer. His work, and especially his early work, is representative
of the ‘molodaya literatura’ generation that was nurtured in the LITOs
of the Thaw. He strikes a balance between literariness and accessibility
that enabled him to satisfy the criteria for official publication while writ-
ing for an educated audience. His work does not introduce the kinds of
developments in the Russian poetic language that are found in the works
of Sosnora, Bobyshev, and Brodsky; instead, it preserves and continues the
23 A few poems that Kushner wrote ‘for the desk drawer’ were published during glasnost'
in Maya Borisova, ed., To vremya – eti golosa (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel', 1990).
24 [Interview] Knizhnoe obozrenie, 27 (7 July 1989), p. 9.
156 Chapter 3
St Petersburg lyric tradition during the post-Stalin period and continues

to do so in the post-Soviet period.
From the beginning of his career, Kushner’s poetry was distinguished
by his sophisticated and varied use of strict form. In his first collection,
Pervoe vpechatlenie (First impression) (1962), poems that take light or some-
what inconsequential subjects are surprisingly distinguished by their poetic
craftsmanship. The subject of ‘Prozaik prozu dolgo pishet’ (‘The prose writer
takes time to write his prose’), for example, is not serious, but its complex
rhyme scheme demonstrates great formal precision and skill:
Прозаик прозу долго пишет.

Он разговоры наши слышит,
Он распивает с нами чай,
При этом льет такие пули!
При этом как бы невзначай
Глядит, как ты сидишь на стуле.
Он, свой роман в уме построив,

Летит домой, не чуя ног,
И там судьбой своих героев
Распоряжается, как бог.
То судит их, то выручает,

Им зонтик вовремя вручает,
Сначала их в гостях сведет,
Потом на улице столкнет,
Изобразит их удивление.
Не верю в эти совпаденья!
Сиди, прозаик, тих и нем.
Никто не встретился ни с кем.
The prose writer takes a long time to write his prose./ He listens to our conversations,/
he drinks tea with us,/ and while doing so he’s moulding such bullets!/ Meanwhile, as
if by accident,/ he’s watching how you sit on your chair.// Once he’s constructed his
novel in his head,/ he rushes home, feet hardly touching the ground,/ and there the
fates of his characters/ he settles like a god.// Now he judges them, now he rescues
them,/ puts an umbrella in their hands just in time,/ to start with he has them visit
friends,/ then they meet on the street,/ he describes their surprise./ I don’t believe
in these coincidences!/ Sit there, prose writer, quiet and dumb./ Nobody has met
anybody.
This rhyme scheme (AAbCbC||AbAb||AAbbCCdd) uses both alternating

and adjacent patterns and masculine and feminine lines in different com-
binations. Many poems of this collection demonstrate such complexity.
Overall, Kushner uses a strikingly wide variety of rhyme schemes: poems
with all dactylic rhymes, an alternation of dactylic and masculine rhymes,
and all masculine rhymes among others. The iambic tetrameter of this poem
is typical: Kushner uses iambic metres most commonly, but also ventures
into ternary metres using amphibrachic trimeter, for example, in ‘Osen'’
(‘Autumn’). Thus, while he tends to favour the most ‘classical’ of all metres
in Russian poetry, he still is apparently at pains to avoid undue reliance on
one metre and the monotony that might produce. In subsequent collec-
tions, he continued to use a wide variety of rhythms while staying within
the range of syllabo-tonic ‘classical’ metres. In contrast to poets who felt
that the ‘classical’ metres had been worn out – a category that includes,
obviously, the Futurists, but also less obviously others who adopted the
dol'nik to extend the possibilities of rhythm – Kushner believes that they
are still fruitful forms for modern poetry.
The purposeful variety of formal properties in Pervoe vpechatlenie con-
stitutes the most important statement this collection makes. It expresses
Kushner’s allegiance to the ‘classical’ tradition of Russian poetry, which has,
over time, used the wide range of formal features that Kushner employs.
Such formal variety is also a significant step beyond the narrow formal
parameters of much of the published poetry of the day. When Kushner was
criticised from writing on ‘shallow themes’,25 critics missed the point (or
chose not to make it) that the form of his early poems makes a statement
about the Russian poetic tradition, and oversteps the narrow and banal
parameters of Socialist Realism.
25 Lidiya Ginzburg, Zapisnye knizhki, p. 326.

158 Chapter 3
Already in his second collection Nochnoi dozor (Night watch), Kushner

apparently felt less compulsion to advertise his skill and versatility in poetic
form. As the emphasis on form diminishes, a corresponding development
of themes and subjects is observed, and a surer sense of the lyric persona
begins to emerge. In his prose, Kushner has described his persona thus:
I know my lyric hero: this is someone in a profession, perhaps a doctor, or a teacher

or an engineer, a scientist, librarian … It is a person who has not compromised his
integrity for the sake of his career, but who has not entered into open conflict with
the epoch either, who has taken upon himself the weight of his life not just for his
‘wife and kids’ and not just in the hope that he will realise his own abilities and
knowledge. Someone, after all, has to treat the sick, teach children, build, count, sit
at the microscope …
I assure you this is no Akaky Akakievich and even less ‘mad Evgeny’, who ‘is
ashamed of his poverty, breathes in petrol, and curses fate’ – it is a member of the
twentieth century intelligentsia.26
This character serves as a member of the intelligentsia, and rejects

ostentatious displays of non-conformity. His acceptance of responsibil-
ity, fulfilment of duty, and contentment with his lot in life are important,
since they underpin his quiet confidence in the traditional values of the
intelligentsia such as scholarly work, education and refinement, and high
art and literature. A short poem from the collection Primety (Omens), ‘Pri
vsem talante i ume’ (For all your talent and brains), expresses this charac-
ter’s strong sense of his place in life. He addresses a friend, with whom he
shares a steadiness of character, literariness, and the even-paced, inexorable
process of growing old:
При всем таланте и уме

В библиотечной полутьме
Так и состаришься, друг милый,
А я на школьных сквозняках
Состарюсь, мел кроша в руках,
Втирая в доску что есть силы.
26 Aleksandr Kushner, Apollon v snegu (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel', 1991), p. 502.

У века правильный расчет,

Он нас поглубже затолкнет,
Он знает: мы такого теста.
Туда, где ценятся слова,
Где не кружится голова,
И это, точно, наше место.
For all your talent and brains,/ in the half-light of the library/ you too will grow
old, dear friend,/ and I, in the draughts at school/ shall grow old, crushing chalk in
hand,/ rubbing the board as much as my strength will allow me.// The century has
made its calculations correctly,/ it will push us deeper down,/ it knows that we are
made that way./ Down to where words are valued,/ where one’s head doesn’t spin,/
and that is precisely where we belong.
His quiet confidence in himself and his position in life rests not only upon
his own sense of identity as a literary and a working person, but also upon
the fact that he shares this identity with his friend. In other poems, too,
friends who share his life and his world view enter the poems as back-
ground figures, supporting and affirming him in his feelings and beliefs.
Their presence is emphasised by Kushner’s use of pronouns: he writes
using almost exclusively first and second person pronouns, and often in
the plural, underlining the sense that an important part of his identity is
bound up with others.
This lyric voice, so grounded in the shared values and behaviour of the
academic and professional world, would have spoken directly to Kushner’s
readers among the Leningrad intelligentsia. Indeed, a reviewer in 1967
wrote of Kushner and his work:
Are you tired of poetry such as ‘I’ve travelled Siberia’ or ‘We ploughed’? Here there is
a room, a bed, a table, and the road to work for you. Are you tired of insincere pathos?
Here are quiet and thoughtful poems for you. Do you want to sit and converse in
private with someone restrained and intelligent? This is the person for you.27
27 Leonovich, V., [review] Yunost' 6 (1967), 100–1 (p. 101).

160 Chapter 3
The sense that the poems offer their readers a quiet conversation points to
another salient aspect of Kushner’s persona: the intimacy with which he
speaks. His poems create such an impression by using colloquial language and
the intonation of speech. In many instances a poem’s impression and meaning
is created less through ideas and imagery than through the effective evocation
of what Robert Frost referred to as ‘sentence sounds’:28 the impression of not
only what is being said but also the intonation with which it is uttered.
The language in Kushner’s poetry is almost always spoken language:
sentences are usually not too long, with few subordinate clauses; he rarely
uses grammatical forms which are largely absent from spoken Russian such
as participles and gerunds; and the poems are peppered with interjections,
exclamations and grammatical markers of spoken language. There are poems
that give a sense of speech by opening with a conjunction or exclamation that
foregrounds the presence of a speaker: ‘I esli v ad ya popadu’ (‘And if I end up
in hell’), ‘Vot son: v kompanii druzei’ (‘Here’s a dream: I’m in the company
of friends’), and ‘Vot sizhu na shatkom stule’ (‘Here I’m sitting on a rickety
chair’). Poems express ideas or suggestions in an informal, conversational style,
and reach their conclusions not via a formally constructed argument, but
through an exploration of ideas over the course of the poem: ‘Net, ne privet,
a tak, tumannyi’ (‘No, not a greeting, but only a hazy’), ‘Zhivu li ya? Zhiva
li ty?’ (‘Am I alive? Are you alive?’), ‘Net, ne odno, a dva litsa’ (‘No, not one,
but two faces’). Yet more poems are written explicitly in the form of a mono-
logue or dialogue, and are punctuated as such, for example ‘Otkaz ot poemy’
(‘A rejection of long poems’), ‘Dva golosa’ (‘Two voices’) and ‘To vetochkoi
mashet v nochnoi tishine’ (‘Now a twig waves in the night-time quiet’).
In his critical articles on Russian poetry, Kushner has written of the
importance for poetry of a sense of contemporary, spoken language and
intonation. In an essay on Annensky,29 he identifies specifically the sense
of a poet’s individual intonation as the hallmark of his or her style:
28 Robert Frost, ‘Sentence Sounds’ in James Scully, ed., Modern Poets on Modern Poetry
(London and Glasgow: Fontana/Collins, 1966), pp. 50–3.
29 Aleksandr Kushner, Apollon v snegu. Zametki na polyakh (Leningrad: Sovetskii
pisatel', 1991), p. 166.
Spoken language, conversational intonation, this is the bottomless arsenal of poetic

speech. It is precisely this that refreshes poetic language. A poet grasps and brings
into poetry his selection of intonation patterns, – is that not how we can recognise
a poet from just a few lines of work taken at random from a text?
Some poets are best characterised by their ideas, other by formal experi-
mentation, narrative, or imagery; Kushner might be best understood as a
poet of intonation. This quality would not have offended the Soviet arbi-
ters of literary taste since it suggests something in common with the folk
ethos canonical to Socialist Realism and avoids a too high, elitist register.
At the same time, however, conversational language in poetry deliberately
avoids the high-flown rhetoric of the pompous, grandiose style of much
Soviet poetry.
The title of the 1975 collection Pryamaya rech' (Direct speech) draws
attention to a manner of using language, and the title poem takes as its
subject the art of plain speaking:
Что хочешь, я сравню

Со всем, что хочешь. Дело
Не в этом. Как меню,
Мне это надоело.
И тополь – на ходу –
С конем, когда послушно
Идет на поводу,
Сравню, но это скучно.
Хотя б чулки на нем,

Как на стволе известка,
Сверкали, что нам в том?
Так это стало плоско.
Проставлена цена
На стиховых красотах.
Прямая речь одна
Еще проймет кого-то.
162 Chapter 3
Так выбирай слова

И пропускай союзы.
Кружится голова
От многословной музы.
К виску прижав ладонь,

Разглядывай Петрополь.
А конь откуда? Конь
Тут ни при чем, и тополь.
Я жить бы так хотел,

Чтоб было больше света,
Так чтобы ты глядел
И одобрял все это.
Как та звезда горит,

Как тот огонь средь ночи …
– Короче, – говорит, –
Прости, еще короче!
Whatever you want I’ll compare/ with anything you want. That’s/ not the point. Like
a menu,/ I’m bored of it.// I’ll casually compare a poplar/ with a horse that’s duti-
fully/ walking on the rein,/ but that is boring.// And even if it had stockings/ that
shone, like lime wash on a tree trunk,/ what is that to us?/ It has become so banal./
There is a set price/ on poetic beauty./ Only direct speech/ might still have an effect
on somebody.// So choose words,/ and miss out conjunctions./ Your head spins/
if the muse is verbose.// With hand pressed to temple,/ look around Petropolis./
Where did you get that horse from? A horse/ has no place here, nor a poplar.// I
would like to live in such a way/ that there was more light,/ in such a way that you
looked/ and approved of all this.// Like that star shines,/ like that flame in the midst
of the night …/ ‘In brief,’ he says,/ ‘Forgive me, but be briefer!’
The poem uses the ‘sound’ or intonation of speech in order to communicate

the speaker’s sense of frustration and weariness both at longwinded poetry
that draws meaningless comparisons between objects, and at the fact that
such poetry is overrated. This criticism might well have been directed at the
scores of hack poets producing reams of mediocre Soviet poetry accord-

ing to rules learnt from respected models of Socialist Realism and from
teaching at the literary institute. But the emphasis in the poem is not on
the details of the complaint – these are presented concisely, even ellipti-
cally. The main impression of the poem is created through its intonation,
which so vividly evokes frustration and weariness, and finally by the firm
yet playful request to stop talking that brings the poem to an end.
Kushner also uses interjections to convey a certain manner or into-
nation: these can work to shape a poem’s argument, to signal a shift in
subject, to bring it to a close, to cast what has gone before in a new light,
or to be a point of pathos. In the poem ‘Kanal’ (‘Canal’) we find such an
interjection. The mood of the poem is reflective as the speaker describes
memories of Griboedov Canal that come back to him on a visit there. In
the fourth stanza, he addresses a definite interlocutor with words that have
a self-evident intonation. They are distinguished from the rest of the poem
and thus draw our attention:
Со славой, друг мой, ничего,

Пора сказать, не вышло.
Hopes of fame, my friend,/ I have to say, never came to anything.
This is the moment in this poem when the persona’s attention shifts from
the past to the present. He ceases conjuring memories and begins to address
his situation now. Thus, the immediacy of this voice with its definite into-
nation matches the immediacy of his subject: the shift in tone foregrounds
the change in his gaze.
The perception and honesty with which the speaker looks back on
his life in ‘Kanal’ lie at the heart of Kushner’s work and characterise many
poems. Through self-reflection, sincerity, and intimate tone, he avoids
the banality of so much Soviet published poetry, and uncovers anxiety
and vulnerability that enable a true and lyrical voice to emerge. ‘I esli v
ad ya popadu’ (‘And if I should go to hell’) is a poem about self-doubt,
and addresses a concern specific to the quiet, restrained, intellectual type
Kushner writes both for and about:
164 Chapter 3
И если в ад я попаду,
Есть наказание в аду
И для меня: не лед, не пламя!
Мгновенья те, когда я мог
Рискнуть, но стыл и тер висок,
Опять пройдут перед глазами.
Всё счастье, сколько упустил,

В саду, в лесу и у перил,
В пути, в гостях и темном море …
Есть казнь в аду таким, как я:
То рай прошедшего житья,
Тоска о смертном недоборе.
And if I should go to hell,/ there is a punishment in hell/ for me as well: not ice, not
fire!/ Those moments when I could/ have taken a risk, but cooled instead and rubbed
my temple,/ will pass again before my eyes.// All the happiness that I have missed
out on,/ in the garden, in the forest, at the balustrade,/ on the road, at friends and
in the dark sea …/ There is punishment in hell for those like me:/ it is the paradise
of past existence,/ the sorrow of a fatal shortfall.
He explores his failures and shortcomings, and evokes a pensive mood

which is sustained to the very end of the poem.
From the 1970s onwards, tone, mood and atmosphere are often at
the heart of Kushner’s poems. Sound patterning, rhyme, repetition, and
subdued tone often complement a wistful, night-time, private, or solitary
theme. ‘Vizhu, vizhu, spozaranku’ (‘I see, I see, in the early morning’) is an
elegiac poem that uses the names of waterways in St Petersburg to evoke
a fleeting, panoramic guide of the city imbued with a sad and wistful air.
The final line brings to the poem the names of three rivers of the classical
underworld, and with them the associations of death; in addition, it recalls
Mandel'shtam’s vision of Petrograd as Petropolis in Tristia (1916), and
invokes the established literary trope of this city as the city of the dead:
Вижу, вижу, спозаранку

Устремленные в Неву
И Обводный, и Фонтанку,
И похожую на склянку
Речку Кронверку во рву.
И каналов без уздечки

Вижу утренною прыть,
Их названья на дощечке,
И смертельной Черной речки
Ускользающую нить.
Слышу, слышу вздох неловкий,

Плач по жизни прожитой,
Вижу Екатерингофки
Блики, отблески, подковки
Жирный отсвет нефтяной.
Вижу серого оттенка

Мойку, женщину и зонт,
Крюков, лезущий на стенку,
Пряжку, Карповку, Смоленку,
Стикс, Коцит и Ахеронт.
I see, I see, in the early morning,/ all headed for the Neva/ the Obvodnyi Canal, the
Fontanka,/ and the Kronverk Stream/ looking like glass in its ditch.// And I see the
morning energy, / unbridled, of the canals, their names on signs,/ and the ribbon of
the fatal Black Brook/ slipping away.// I hear, I hear the awkward breath,/ the lament
for life that’s passed,/ I see the flashes of the Yekateringofka stream,/ its reflections,
arcs,/ the greasy gleam of oil.// I see the Moika, a shade of grey,/ a woman with
an umbrella,/ the Kryukov Canal, lapping at the wall,/ the Pryazhka, Karpovka,
Smolenka,/ The Styx, Cocytus, Acheron.
The names are all familiar and belong to everyday life, yet also recall the
other sides to Petersburg: its literary tradition, its phantasmagorical asso-
ciations, and its tragic and dark history. The poem is restrained, suggestive,
and subtle, capturing a mood that resists too strict a definition.
166 Chapter 3
Kushner aims to recreate moods and capture feelings, but not necessar-
ily to draw conclusions from them. Very often, the feeling or idea presented
in a poem is transitory, even fleeting, so that it captures and preserves a
moment that would otherwise be lost. This moment can occur during a
transition, for example from sleeping to waking, and is thus a ‘half ’ state,
difficult to define as one thing or another. ‘Prosnus' – ne poimu ponachalu’
(‘I wake up and can’t understand at first’) describes the process of slowly
returning to consciousness as one awakes: a fleeting experience that is over
almost before one realises that it is happening. Kushner devotes an entire
poem to this transitory state, and in so doing draws our attention to experi-
ence that falls outside the dichotomy of being wakeful or sleeping:
Проснусь – не пойму поначалу,

Куда я лежу головой.
Как будто меня укачало
В тяжелой дороге ночной.
Как будто меня оглушили
Настойкой, отравой из трав.
Как будто меня раскружили,
Салфеткой глаза завязав.
Где двери? И окна? И стены?

Об угол ударившись лбом,
В себя прихожу постепенно
И вот понимаю с трудом:
Душа возвращается в тело
И в спешке, набегавшись всласть,
В ту лунку, где прежде сидела,
Как в лузу, не может попасть.
I wake up and I can’t understand at first/ which way round I’m lying./ It’s as if I’ve
been carsick/ on a rough night road./ It’s as if I’ve been stunned/ by a tincture, a
herbal poison./ As if I’ve been blindfolded/ with a napkin and spun around.// Where
are the doors, and the windows, and the walls?/ I bump my head on a corner,/ then
gradually come round,/ and have a hard time realising/ that my soul is returning to
my body,/ and in its haste, after journeying to its heart’s content,/ it can’t find its way
back into the socket, like a billiard ball into a pocket, where it sat before.
He describes a momentary sense of dislocation: it does not last long, but

for a time at least it seems as if the soul is separated from the body. He takes
this fleeting sensation and ‘explains’ it in terms that relate to our emotional
and intuitive sense of the world. This personal response is underlined by
his use of the future perfective here, which imparts a particularly colloquial
tone to the voice.
Another such ‘in-between’ state is described in ‘V sadu, zadumavshis'
bog vest' o chem, o kom’ (‘In the garden, contemplating God knows what
or whom’) which describes a state of contemplation arrived while gazing
at the starry night sky. The scene is described dynamically in contrast to
the static observer: as the sky and night sharpen in focus, he loses himself
and seems suspended between life and death, and past and present:
Граненый, вытянутый, острый, как кристалл, –

Мучнистых, сумеречных бабочек услада.
Из жизни выпал я – и к смерти не пристал.
Ты пахнешь памятью, оставь меня, не надо!
Faceted, stretched out, sharp like crystal, –/ the delight of floury, twilight moths./
I’ve fallen out of life, but haven’t got to death./ You smell of memory, leave me
alone, please don’t!
The final stanza that follows can expand on the persona’s sensations only
in negative terms: there is nothing that can satiate or calm or explain this
tense, strained and yearning feeling. The poem strives to define an appar-
ently indefinable state that again hangs between two points, this time that
between life and death. It is an attempt to express this ineffable and mys-
terious state, and as such belongs to a strong tradition in Russian poetry
from Lermontov’s ‘Vykhozhu odin ya na dorogu’, to Tyutchev and Fet, to
the later Symbolists:
Нет утешения! И объяснений нет!

Ни в счастье – повода, ни в боли – утоленья.
Но эта пристальность, но этот белый цвет …
Век длится обморок или одно мгновенье?
168 Chapter 3
There’s no consolation! And no explanations!/ There’s no reason in joy and no

quenching of pain./ But this rapture, but this white light …/ Does my swoon last a
century or just a moment?
Here Kushner responds to the world before him not with analysis or expla-
nation of what he sees, but with pure feelings, perception, and intuition.
As in ‘Prosnus’ –ne poimu ponachalu’ we have a direct and immediate
sense of how he experiences this moment: these poems ‘fix’ states of flux
in which our consciousness is suspended, or struggles to make sense of
perception.
Kushner’s poetic project here is to capture a state characterised by
impermanence and a challenge to definition. These are not subjects that
lead us to truths or over-arching philosophies about life, for they point not
to what is always true, but to occasional, unusual, or fleeting moments that
may not easily be explained. Such moments point to another side of life that
is at least partially hidden from us: our spiritual or emotional intuitive being
that come to the fore in states of semi consciousness or distraction. Wallace
Stevens wrote that a poet’s subject is his sense of the world;30 Kushner’s
subject is, in part, his sense of the elements of our world that lie beyond
the reach of our language and logic. ‘Net, net privet, a tak, tumannyi’ (‘No,
not a greeting, but only a hazy’) articulates another search for definition.
Here, the persona struggles to find language adequate to express a muted,
vague, and complex emotion:
Нет, не привет, а так, туманный

Слух о тебе, немного странный,
Как всякий слух, почти что вздох.
Почти что взмах рукою. Шепот.
Так, полушелест, полуропот.
Должно быть, вздор. Или подвох.
30 Quoted in Helen Vendler, On Extended Wings. Wallace Stevens’ Longer Poems

(Cambridge, MA, London: Harvard University Press, 1969), p. 6.
Нет, не тоска, а так, сомненье.

Полупечаль, полусмущенье.
Руки дрожанье у виска.
Нет, не тоска, скорее жалость.
Скорей отчаянье, усталость,
И стыд, и мука, и тоска.
No, not a greeting, but only a hazy/ rumour about you, a little strange,/ like any
rumour, almost a sigh./ Almost a wave of the hand. A whisper./ A half-rustle,
maybe, a half-murmur./ It must be nonsense. Or a trap.// No, not yearning, more
like doubt./ Half-sorrow, half-embarrassment./ Trembling hands at my temple./
No, not a yearning, more like pity./ More like despair, fatigue,/ and shame, and
torment, and yearning.
Suggestions are dismissed and give way to further suggestions that are also
rejected: we are left with multiple possibilities and contradictions rather
than a final version.
Kushner does not present the inability to define and name certain feel-
ings or states as a failure or inadequacy of language. He views the situation
from the opposite perspective: blurred boundaries, transitory states, and
feelings that elude classification or categorisation are, by being free from
labels, charged with dynamism and potential. It is in these in-between areas
that Kushner finds interest, life, complexity, and the reassurance that not
everything can be defined, explained and accounted for. In ‘Dykhan'e mgly
i sveta drozh'’ (‘The breath of mist of and the quiver of light’) he celebrates
halfway stages and liminal states and the freedom that they represent:
Дыханье мглы и света дрожь,

Узор по розовому полю.
Размытый контур тем хорош,
Что отпускает вещь на волю.
Смотри: зажмурилась она,

Как будто вышла из темницы.
Мерцает, не обведена
Чертой, не чувствуя границы.
170 Chapter 3
Как будто с пленницы петлю,

Ее стеснящую, сняли.
Как будто горькое: люблю –
Еще мы, охнув, не сказали.
Сквозит и тянется к лучу,

Сама и тень, и позолота.
Не называй, я не хочу
Знать, как зовется это что-то.
Мерцает что-то и сквозит,

Превозмогая расстоянье.
Но и во мне весь день болит,
Всю ночь болит … И нет названья.
The breath of mist and the quiver of light,/ a pattern on a rosy field./ A boundary
that’s been erased is good/ because it releases an object into freedom.// Look, it
wrinkles up its eyes/ as if emerging from the dark./ It glimmers, no longer outlined/
with a border, with no feeling of a boundary.// As if a constraining noose had been
taken from a prisoner./ As if, we hadn’t yet said the bitter words, ‘I love’, with a
sigh.// Gilding, just a shadow itself, shines and reaches for the light./ Don’t give it
a name, I don’t want/ to know what this something is called.// Something glimmers
and shines,/ overcoming distance./ And in me all day something hurts,/ all night it
hurts … and there’s no name.
By dwelling on the ephemeral and indefinable, Kushner evokes a cer-

tain longing, tension, or agitation that has no apparent cause and is difficult
to express. He acknowledges there are parts of our lives we experience but
do not share with others, that do not find any outlet for in public life and
culture, and that at times we may not fully articulate even to ourselves.
This subject of our private lives and selves had particular resonance in the
USSR during the late Soviet period: the private side of life in the USSR
had often to accommodate frustrations with Soviet society and the system,
religious and beliefs and spiritual feelings, and apolitical, private and intel-
lectual lives that found no reflection in official culture. Kushner’s enduring
popularity with his generation, especially in his native city of Leningrad,
is surely connected to the extent to which his poetry reflects the division
of the world into public and private, what is named and described in the
public sphere and what is protected by individuals in their private, inner
lives. Not only does it acknowledge this status quo, it also privileges the
inner, private world that has no echo or reflection in official culture.
The body of work that Kushner published in the USSR is profoundly
literary. It was written not so much in line with the norms and dictates of
Socialism Realism, as with those of the Russian poetic tradition stretching
back to the eighteenth century. It satisfied Soviet restrictions on published
poetry by being strict in form and conservative in content, but developed
subtle areas of poetry that were less politicised by the Soviet literary authori-
ties and censors, such as intonation. With his individual and markedly
intellectual persona, he managed to avoid the civic themes and patriotic
fervour prescribed for men’s poetry, and wrote instead about his emotional
and intellectual life.
Even in his earliest work, ‘classical’ form and intertextual reference to
Russian poetry make important statements about the high value he places
on tradition and in particular the cultural inheritance of the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries; this sense of continuity with Russian poetry
only increases as his work matures. At the same time, however, such an
emphasis on the past is tempered by his use of markedly contemporary,
spoken language that firmly grounds the poems in their time. The poems
are contemporary in terms of their subject as well and, in fact, across the
period addressed here Kushner’s development towards more inward-look-
ing, reflective and private subjects mirrors a broader cultural shift from
the 1960s, era of the shestidesyatniki, hope, and optimism, to the 1970s
when, after 1968, the disillusionment with the Soviet system led many
intellectuals into a retreat into the private sphere. In private worlds one
could find compensation for the banal official rhetoric in religious belief
and underground literature, but also in the work of published poets such
as Kushner, who offered continuity with a cultural tradition that had all
but disappeared from public life.
Chapter 4
Viktor Sosnora
Viktor Sosnora was born in 1936. Although born in the Crimea, he soon
returned with his family to their city Leningrad. Various tales of his youth,
family and experiences during the war have been published, and these have
grown more extraordinary and elaborate over time.1 Dates and details
given in one interview do not always match those in another, so it is dif-
ficult to piece together an accurate biography. It seems that he was evacu-
ated from Leningrad to the South during the war. In the post-war years,
his father, who was in the military, was posted to various cities, including
Warsaw, Lvov, and Archangelsk. Sosnora lived in Lvov for quite a number
of these years, until he began his military service in the mid-1950s. He
served in the army probably 1955–8, and then returned to Leningrad and
worked in a metallurgical factory until 1963, when he became a full-time
writer. He lived with his family, and in their apartment he remembers there
were many literary books belonging to his maternal grandfather, including
translations of Kafka. These were important for his early development as
a writer.2
While working as a metal worker for a number of years, Sosnora also
took some evening courses at the Faculty of Philosophy at the univer-
sity, but apparently did not complete the degree. He attended the LITO
‘Golos Yunosti’ run by David Dar, and apparently the Mining Institute
and PROMKO LITOs as well. Once his poetry came to the attention of
1 These include the introductions to Sosnora and his work in English found in The
Living Mirror and A Million Premonitions. Poems by Viktor Sosnora translated by
Dinara Georgeoliani and Mark Halperin (Brookline, MA: Zephyr Press, 2004).
2 Viktor Aleksandrovich Sosnora, interview with the author, tape recording, St
Petersburg, 21 May 2003 and 16 July 2007. Passim.
174 Chapter 4
the powerful Moscow figures of the poet Nikolai Aseev and Lilya Brik, he
began to travel to Moscow when possible to meet these older people who
became his sponsors. He recalls that his factory employers were generous
towards him, giving him expenses paid trips to Moscow to help when they
could. Sosnora’s Moscow sponsors were crucial for his career, since they
exerted pressure on the Leningrad and Moscow branches of the publishing
house Sovetskii pisatel' to pubish him. Aseev wrote to Dmitry Likhachev
of the difficulties he encountered trying to persuade editors to accept the
work:
At last I broke through the barrier and got his 1000 lines accepted at the publish-
ing house Sovpis in Leningrad. But what it cost me! The editor there is a certain
Avramenko, whose success in the literary sphere is a mystery. He writes poor imitations
of Polonsky, without any taste or colour. But he publishes these in great numbers –
some witch has had a hand in his fate, or I don’t know. He was completely negative
about Sosnora’s poems and only after protracted pressure from the chief editors in
Moscow did he unwillingly and slowly sign the contract for this tiny book.3
Aseev wrote this letter about Sosnora’s collection Vsadniki (Horsemen) in

1961; the collection was published only in 1969. This kind of delay was not
uncommon, especially for young writers.
Sosnora’s first collection, Yanvarskii liven' (January downpour), came
out in 1962, followed by Triptykh (Triptych) in 1965, Vsadniki in 1969, Aist
(Stork) in 1972, and Kristall (Crystal) in 1977. In the same year, a volume of
selected poems also came out. With the benefit of post-Soviet publications,
it is possible to see that much of his poetry was edited or left out altogether.
The arrangement of collections was changed completely, except in the case
of Vsadniki, and Sosnora felt that this was crippling. In the preface to the
2001 collection Devyat' knig (Nine books), he explained how censorship
had distorted his poetry until 1989:
3 Nikolai Aseev, Rodoslovnaya poeziya: Stat'i i vospominaniya; pis'ma (Moscow:

Sovetskii pisatel', 1990), p. 467.
Viktor Sosnora 175
I have to be read in the same way that I write: in books. I don’t write individual poems,
I write either nothing or a book. What was published up to 1989 can be called a ‘soup’
of poems from various years, which had been censored as well.4
After the 1972 collection Aist, he found it very difficult to get anything
published. His fortune changed when he was lucky enough to receive
the patronage of a well-placed official: the two publications of 1977 were
achieved with the influence of this person. The poems in Kristall are radical
by the standards of Soviet poetry at that time; even so, Sosnora felt frus-
trated by the limitations imposed upon him, and in 1979 he published in
tamizdat for the first time: a collection of prose entitled Letuchii gollandets
(The flying Dutchman) was published by ‘Posev’ in Germany. He may have
felt able to take this step after the example of Metropol (Metropole)5 set a
precedent for official writers publishing abroad that same year. A few years
later, during glasnost', he began to publish more fully. In 2006 his collected
poetry was at last published in full.6
Sosnora has long been well known to readers in his native Leningrad/
Petersburg, and in Moscow to some extent as well because of his connections
there. In the West he was read as an interesting, ‘alternative’ Soviet poet
when his work appeared in translation as early as 1972 in Suzanne Massie’s
The Living Mirror. Since 1991, he has been recognised as a major poet in
Russia with at least three literary prizes. Yet there has been little scholarly
attention paid Sosnora’s poetry to this day.7 His work is a daunting task for
the scholar not only due to its undeniable difficulty, but also because it is
uneven. He changes over time, moving through different phases in his work,
4 Viktor Sosnora, Devyat' knig (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2001), p. 5.

5 V. Aksenov et al., Metropol' (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1979).
6 All references to texts in this chapter refer to this volume of poetry: Viktor Sosnora,
Stikhotvoreniya (St Petersburg: Amphora, 2006). This volume supersedes the piece-
meal publication of his work in the USSR, and presents the complete, original col-
lections of poems as Sosnora wrote them.
7 Darra Goldstein’s article ‘Moscow in Fences. Sosnora at the Gate’, Russian Review
vol. 51, 2 (April 1992), 230–7 is the only article this author has been able to find in
English. In Russian, interviews with the author seem to have replaced critical atten-
tion. There has been no book-length study of his work in either language.
176 Chapter 4
but from the earliest poems to his mature works it is possible to trace the
development of the cardinal features of his style and a sustained insistence
on certain aesthetic and formal features. By the mid-1970s, these had come
together into a mature, accomplished, and highly individual style.
Early Experimentation
Although Vsadniki, which is subtitled Po motivam ‘Slova o polku Igoreve’

(Motifs from ‘The lay of Igor's campaign’ ), was not published until 1969, it
contains some of Sosnora’s earliest work: the poems written on themes
taken from medieval Russian literature. These include a poem entitled
‘Slovo o polku Igoreve’, which is a retelling of the story of the medieval
epic, and other works inspired by the legend and work of the medieval
bard Boyan, by the legends of Solovei-razboinik and Kitezh, and by the
legendary Battle of Kulikovo. The poems of this collection are united not
only by a common subject; throughout, the literary devices, register, syntax
and imagery of Russian medieval language and literature are explored and
imitated so that the richness of the tradition that Sosnora has chosen as
inspiration is reflected in his work.
Sosnora has referred to a distinction he perceives between ‘Soviet’ and
‘Russian’ languages.8 He uses the term ‘Soviet’ to describe the standardised,
normative spectrum of language found in officially published or broad-
cast Soviet literature and media that was limited by constraints upon the
higher and lower regions of linguistic register and style. In contrast to this,
the poems of Vsadniki explore the ‘Russian’ language through archaisms,
variant forms, and medieval names, places and events. Sosnora repeatedly
chooses a more unusual word over a more modern, standard choice, even
emphasising a proliferation of synonyms or variants:
8 Viktor Aleksandrovich Sosnora, interview with the author, tape recording, St

Petersburg, 21 May 2003.
Viktor Sosnora 177
За городом Галичем,
на перепутье, харчевня.
Для панства –
харчевня,
а простонародью –
корчма.
Beyond the town of Galich,/ at a crossroads, a tavern./ To the nobleman a tavern,/
but colloquially, an inn.
Here he draws attention to the variety and diversity of the cultural mix in
Russia’s heritage: the word ‘panstvo’ has a Polish root and reference point,
while ‘kharchevnya’ has a Turkic root which points to the Eastern influences
on Russia and the Russian language. This use of language invokes richness
in language, history and culture; in particular here he draws attention to
the variation in language between different social classes, contrasting the
usage of Polish landowners with simple, peasant Russians.
Such archaisms in the language are used as a tool in the medieval
stylisation of the poems; however, they serve another function as well. The
exercise justifies Sosnora’s close attention to sounds and roots in Russian
that is a hallmark of his style, but one that risked accusations from Soviet
critics of prioritising style over content – ‘formalizm’. In a poem from the
cycle ‘Za izyumskim bugrom’, (‘Beyond the Izyum knoll’) Sosnora alliter-
ates heavily and places side by side words in which syllables are repeated:
Приподнимем братины,
братья!
Пузырями в братинах
брага!
За отвагу прошедших
ратей!
За врагов,
размешанных с прахом!
We raise our wine bowls, brothers!/ Beer with bubbles in the wine bowls!/ To the
courage of armies gone by!/ To enemies, mixed with the dust!
178 Chapter 4
The effect is striking. Repeated sounds forge close associations between

words thus aligned: brotherliness, drinking and war (bratiny, brat'ya, braga)
are closely linked here, as are drinking, courage and the enemy (braga,
otvaga, vrag). Beyond this, the repetition of sounds draws attention more
generally to the use of language beyond its purely lexical level. The sounds
of the words are important independent of their meaning; it is not sur-
prising to find, in the poem ‘Kalika’ (‘Pilgrim’), non-verbal sounds that
contribute vividness to an image:
Посох тук-тук …
Плетется калика,
посох тук-тук …
в портянках плетеных,
посох тук-тук,
стихарь да коврига,
посох тук-тук,
у калике в плетенке.
A staff tap-tap …/ The pilgrim trudges,/ a staff tap-tap …/ in woven trousers,/ a staff
tap-tap,/ a surplice and a loaf,/ a staff tap-tap,/ the pilgrim has in his bundle.
He also uses onomatopoeic language to achieve a similar effect. In ‘Pir

Vladimira’ (‘Vladimir’s feast’), a refrain is repeated throughout:
Бей, бубен,
бей, бубен,
бей!
Beat drum,/ beat, drum,/ beat!
These striking sounds give the poems immediacy; there is little that is
abstract in them, much that is concrete and tangibly animated by the lan-
guage. As the examples above demonstrate, they often use the imperative
mood which further animates and enlivens them. Exclamation marks are
peppered throughout and complement the vivid sounds and diverse reg-
isters and associations within Sosnora’s language.
Viktor Sosnora 179
Sosnora also imitates some formal aspects of medieval Russian poetry.

For one, this includes a high incidence of repetition that is typical of an
oral tradition. In his ‘Poslednie pesni Boyana’ (‘The last songs of Boyan’),
the first short song is tightly structured by repetition:
Я всадник. Я воин. Я в поле один.

Последний династии вольной орды.
Я всадник. Я воин. Встречаю восход
с повернутым к солнцу веселым виском.
Я всадник. Я воин во все времена.

На левом ремне моем фляга вина.
На левом плече моем дремлет сова,
и древнее стремя звенит.
Но я не военный потомок славян.

Я всадник весенней земли.
I’m a horseman. I’m a warrior. I’m alone in the field./ The last of a dynasty of free
hordes./ I’m a horseman. I’m a warrior. I greet the dawn/ with a merry temple
turned to the sun.// I’m a horseman. I’m a warrior of all times./ On my left strap
there’s a flagon of wine./ On my left shoulder an owl dozes,/ and the ancient stir-
rup resounds.// But I am no military descendant of Slavs./ I am the horseman of
the spring earth.
The predominance of end-stopped lines adds to the simplicity of the poem;

through this simplicity and repetition, a transparency is achieved that
creates a legendary or archetypal voice. In this way, the form enhances the
poem’s message of the warrior’s elemental identification with nature. The
metre, amphibrachic tetrameter (with interpolated trimeters), is often
associated with a lament or nostalgic mood and thus enhances the pathos
of the lone surviving warrior without ties or countrymen.
In his use of a ‘classical’ metre, Sosnora is of course departing from his
medieval model, which is not written in any verse form. In the poem above,
he uses the accumulated associations of an established classical metre to
add another layer of significance to the poem. It is a detail which points
180 Chapter 4
to a wider feature of Sosnora’s ‘medieval’ poems: more important than

accurately reproducing the formal features of medieval verse is exploring
and employing a wide spectrum of poetic forms. Although Sosnora gen-
erally works within the parameters of ‘classical’ metres, he creates innova-
tive rhythms and uses extensively typographical features such as lesenka,
stolbik, and indentation to vary the lineation. The devices of repetition
and especially anaphora, which are also recognisable elements of medieval
verse, are similarly developed so that they function not merely as imitation
but also refined and sophisticated development of Sosnora’s versification.
Altogether, these efforts take his poetry further from the conventions of
regular stanzas and metre, towards the rhythm and organisation of non-
classical verse. A section from Sosnora’s version of ‘Slovo o polku Igoreve’
illustrates the kind of complex rhythm found in much of his work. The
poem is an interpretation of the following section of the original medieval
text:
Ту ся брата разлучтися на брез быстрой Каялы;

ту кроваваго вина не доста;
ту пиръ докончаша храбрии русичи:
сваты попоиша, а сами полегоша
за землю Рускую.
Ничить трава жалощами,
а древо с тугою къ земли преклонилось.
That is where the brothers parted on the banks of the fast-flowing Kayala;/ that is
where there was not enough bloody wine;/ that is where the brave Russians finished
their feast:/ they made their relatives drunk and they lay down for the Russian land./
The grass droops with pity,/ and the tree bends down to the ground with sorrow.
Here is Sosnora’s version:
И тропинки нет обратно:

стяги пали,
разлучились два брата
на реке Каяле,
Viktor Sosnora 181
на Макатихе кручинной,
где на месте свалки
ковыряют мертвечину
голодранцы-галки.
Галки прыгают, пугаясь:

там скула,
там ус торчит.
Сватов напоив поганых,

полегли русичи,
пир докончили со славой
за краину Русскую …
Преклонили дубравы
разветвленья хрусткие.
Закачались ковыли
жалостливо пó полю.
Убирают ковали
наковальни в пóдполье.
Не ковать им, ковалям,

ни мечей, ни копий.
Им по избам ковылять
с мелочной поковкой.
And there is no path back,/ the banners have fallen./ Two brothers separated/ on the
river Kayala,// on steep Malatikha/ where on the site of a dump/ digging into dead
flesh/ are beggar-jackdaws.// The jackdaws jump, taking fright:/ there is a cheekbone,
there a moustache is sticking up.// Once they’d treated the relatives to a drink,/ the
Russians lay down,/ they finished their feast with glory/ for the Russian land.//
The oak woods bowed down/ their brittle branches.// The feathergrass swayed/
182 Chapter 4
sorrowfully in the field.// The blacksmiths put away/ their anvils in the cellar.//
There’s nothing for them to forge,/ neither swords, nor lances.// They must hobble
from hut to hut/ to do little bits of ironwork.
It is possible to describe the metre of the poem as trochaic tetrameter,

although the use of unstressed ictuses and hypermetrical stresses, together
with the varying line lengths, disrupt the poem’s rhythm to such a degree
that so that it could also be described as a two-ictus accentual metre. In
this, Sosnora distorts the usual rhythms of the ‘classical’ metres to such a
degree that his poems appear experimental.
Although there is no stanza form, two distinct patterns of organisa-
tion emerge within the poem, and these reflect the division into a narrative
section and a lament found in the medieval text. In the first half, Sosnora
has four narrative sections; five couplets comprise the second part, which
thematically expands the last two lines of the original. As well as the metre,
rhythm, and arrangement of lines, Sosnora’s poem is organised in a similar
manner to the medieval text. In the section of the original quoted above,
anaphora (tu … tu … tu) and parallel grammatical forms (svaty popoisha,
a sami polegosha) give the poem shape; in a similar way Sosnora also uses
repetition of various sounds and in particular the syllable ‘kov’, the repeti-
tion of whole words, alliteration, and also end rhyme to give the poem
shape and coherence. This balance of organising elements in the poem is
significant: the conventional features of rhythm and end rhyme that give
shape to much Russian poetry – especially from the nineteenth century –
are not allowed to dominate here. Instead, the devices of sound patterning,
parallelism and repetition also play a prominent part.
While in Vsadniki Sosnora has taken his subject matter and certain
formal aspects of the poems from medieval Russian poetry, in fact in formal
terms, this collection points to the influence of more recent Russian poets
who also turned to Old Russian literature in pursuit of the Slavic roots of
the Russian language: the Futurists of the 1910s and 1920s. Sosnora was
generally acknowledged to be the heir to the Futurists by critics, other poets
and readers alike. Insofar as many Futurists, and in particular Mayakovsky,
had supported the Revolution during the 1920s, this was a politically accept-
able and even desirable association. It was one thing to be associated with
Viktor Sosnora 183
the names of Futurist poets, however, and another to put into practice
some of their more experimental ideas about language. Even during the
Thaw, when the parameters of Socialist Realism had widened consider-
ably, these were not really acceptable in published poetry. Preoccupation
with poetic form over content was still widely criticised, and while lip
service was paid to the rediscovery of poets from the Futurist movement,
the adoption and emulation of their techniques was not, in general, given
official approval.
By using medieval Russian literature as a pretext, Sosnora was able
to experiment with language and poetic form more widely than might
have been approved in poetry that was not related to such a theme. His
experiments with vocabulary and the formal aspects of verse were, very
probably, also influenced by the Futurists’ work, which had been inspired
by an interest in medieval Russian and Slavic etymology and word for-
mation fifty years earlier. The sound of his poems, richly textured by play
with roots and sounds, is more significant than its content, and a com-
ment that Sosnora has made about Futurist poetry might well be applied
to his work:
Obvious thought in poetry can only play an auxiliary role. The interplay of sounds
and of words is the essence of poetry.9
In his reworking of medieval literature and legends in the poems of Vsadniki,

Sosnora develops not so much the subject of his sources but the form and
language of his poems. Yet by turning to the Slovo o polku Igoreve and the
medieval theme, Sosnora legitimised his interest in two literary traditions
that offered him rich material for the creation of his self-consciously Russian
rather than ‘Soviet’ language.
In Sosnora’s early work one finds the experimentation with language
and form through which he came to his mature poetic style. Poems written
1960–2 but not included in Vsadniki are grouped in a collection entitled V
9 Darra Goldstein, ‘An Interview with Viktor Sosnora’ The New York Review of Books
Vol. 35 (15), 13 October 1988, available online at <http://www.nybooks.com/arti-
cles/4299>, accessed 31 August 2008.
184 Chapter 4
poiskakh razvlechenii (In search of distractions). This title points to the two
cardinal features of these poems: they comprise, collectively, a search for
form; and their subject matter is often playful, and for the most part not
weighty. Sosnora’s serious preoccupations and subjects appear later, begin-
ning with collections dated 1963, but in this early period the language and
form have first to be established. Commenting on his work, Sosnora has
stated that, ‘I am not at all interested, and never have been interested in
what I write about. What interests me is how I write.’ This complete dis-
missal of the subject matter of his poetry is belied by a preoccupation with
certain major themes, but there is no doubt that fundamental to Sosnora’s
view of poetry is the idea that form comes before, not after, content. The
kinds of formal experimentation found in Vsadniki is also in the poems of
V poiskakh razvlechenii, and in these poems it is not justified or explained
by the imitation of medieval poetry. It seems likely that this lack of ‘jus-
tification’ for formal experimentation explains why many of these poems
remained unpublished in the Soviet period.
The poem ‘Pervyi sneg’ is metrically and rhythmically similar to ‘I
tropinki net obratno’:
Первый Снег
Первый снег.
Пересмех
перевертышей-снежинок
над лепными урнами.
И снижение снежинок
до земного уровня.
Первый снег.
Пар от рек.
В воду – белые занозы.
Как заносит велотрек,
первый снег заносит.
С первым снегом.
С первым следом.
Viktor Sosnora 185
Здания под слоем снега

запылают камельками.
Здания задразнит небо:
–Эх, вы, камни, камни, камни!
А по каменным палатам
ходят белые цыплята,
прыгают –
превыше крыш!
Кыш!
Кыш!
Кыш!
First snow./ A peal of laughter/ of spoonerism-snowflakes/ above sculpted urns./
And the lowering of snowflakes/ to ground level./ First snow./ Steam from rivers./
Into the water go white splinters./ Like a bicycle skids,/ first snow drifts./ Happy
first snow,/ happy first footprint.// Buildings under a layer of snow/ blaze up like
hearths./ The sky teases buildings:/ ‘Hey you, stones, stones, stones!’// But along
the stone chambers/ white chicks are walking,/ they jump – higher than the roofs!/
Chook! Chook! Chook!
Several features of this poem point specifically to the influence of the

Futurist poet Velemir Khlebnikov. In his discussion of the most zaumnyi
(‘transrational’) of all of Khlebnikov’s works, Bogi (Gods), Gasparov has
analysed the ‘language of the gods’ where the transrational words are found,
the features of which are found in many other of his poems as well.10 The
salient formal features of this language he identifies are tellingly similar to
many of Sosnora’s poems: predominant use of trochaic tetrameter with
other trochaic lines of different lengths; strong stressing of the second
ictus of the line; lines that Gasparov classifies as three-stress ‘makrosy’
made of three one-syllable fully stressed words (such as, in Sosnora’s poems,
‘shchelk, shchelk, shchelk’; and ‘kysh, kysh, kysh!’); and predominantly
end-stopped lines characterised by a jerkiness or staccato effect, punc-
10 ‘Schitalka bogov (o p'ese V. Khlebnikova “Bogi”)’ in M. Gasparov, Izbrannye stat'i

(Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 1995), pp. 246–58.
186 Chapter 4
tuated by many exclamation marks. It is true to say that of the Futurist

poets, Khlebnikov is probably the most significant influence on Sosnora.
While Sosnora’s frequent use of lesenka superficially might point to the
influence of Mayakovsky, in fact this technique had become so widely used
and accepted in Soviet poetry that by the time of the post-Stalin Thaw it
cannot be said to suggest any real connection with the poet who originally
popularised it.
The salient features of Sosnora’s verse form were developed through his
early ‘formal studies’ in Vsadniki and V poiskakh razvlechenii. They include
predominant use of classical metres with frequent recourse to variation
in rhythms through the use of unstressed ictuses and in some cases hyper-
metrical stresses. Lines are rarely organised into regular stanzas; instead, a
combination of varying line lengths commonly shapes the poems, and the
typographical breaking of lines often enhances this variation. Sosnora’s
rhymes are rarely exact or grammatical, except in cases of echo and repetend
rhyme;11 he is creative and imaginative in his use of striking and unusual
rhymes that can be described at best as approximate, and which challenge
the boundaries of conventional and traditional rhyme.
These formal features remain important in Sosnora’s poetry into the
1970s. By that time he had developed the scope and range of his work,
through a range of experiments through the 1960s, to that of a major poet
controlling and managing much longer poems exploring ambitious and
clearly defined ideas. Across very varied collections in the 1960s emerge
themes and, in particular, more philosophical concerns, stylistic devices,
poetic styles, and fantastical elements that are eventually synthesised in
his later, major works.
11 Terminology for the formal aspects of verse has been taken from Barry Scherr, Russian
Poetry: Metre, Rhythm and Rhyme (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1986).
Viktor Sosnora 187
New Directions: The 1960s
Three collections of 1963 explore new themes and imagery in different

directions: Tietta (a word glossed by Sosnora as the Saami word for ‘mechta’
in Russian, ‘daydream’ in English) is a collection of poems mostly about
the North; Kniga yuga (Book of the South) features many characters from
classical myth; and 12 Sov (12 owls) describes a state policed by owls. All
three have in common the creation of a peculiar, individual world, which is
presented through characters, language and imagery. The worlds have simi-
larities with the everyday world that allow for satirical and ironic readings,
but these readings are not exhaustive. Alongside the potential for political
and social comment, there is also linguistic play and skill, elements of fan-
tasy, myth and legend, and a reflective and self-conscious literary persona
aware of the traditions he inherits and continues.
The North portrayed in Tietta is a vast, expansive territory yet a
dead-end place; it can be harsh, soulless and brutal but also inspiring and
beautiful. The poem ‘Za polyarnym krugom’ (‘In the Arctic Circle’)
hints at the brutality of domestic lives in the region through carica-
tures of the drunken men on a Saturday afternoon. It contrasts the open
space and apparent majesty of the area with the very limited lives of its
inhabitants:
За Полярным кругом, за Полярным

Кустики изогнуты, как скрепки.
Может быть,
Сиянье запылает?
Нет.
Не запылает.
Знаю крепко.
Горизонт газетами оклеен.

188 Chapter 4
Говорят,
здесь в самом лучшем виде,
Как делфины,
прыгают олени!
Что ж.
Охотно верю.
Но не видел.
Пьяницы –
наземные пилоты –
в высшем пилотаже по субботам:
тот в петле,
а этот подбородок
у жены выламывает бодро.
Диво – север! Оближите,

ваньки –
встаньки, ваши
важные машины!
Развевайся, знамя – рваный ватник!

Развивайтесь, знанья матерщины!
За Полярным кругом
крик собак.
Подвиг трудовой опять
струится.
И твоя судьба,
моя судьба
замкнута,
как этот круг,
Строитель.
Viktor Sosnora 189
In the Arctic Circle, in the Arctic/ bushes are twisted, like paperclips./ Perhaps
the [Northern] Lights will blaze?/ No./ They won’t blaze./ I know for sure.// The
horizon is pasted with newspapers.// They say that here, in the very best view,/ like
dolphins, reindeer jump!/ What of it?/ I readily believe it,/ but I’ve never seen it.//
The drunks – ground pilots –/ are at the height of aerobatics on Saturdays:/ one in
a loop,/ and this one merrily/ is breaking his wife’s jaw.// A wonder – the North!
Lick/ your important machines, roly-poly toys!// Flutter, banner made from a torn
jacket!/ Grow, proficiency in obscene language!// In the Arctic circle dogs bark-
ing./ A heroic feat of labour flows again./ And your fate, my fate,/ is sealed, like
this circle, Creator.
The beautiful northern lights and leaping reindeer mentioned in the earlier
lines of the poem give way later to grotesque images of the local drunks;
the opening sense of space and distance implied in the opening phrase ‘za
polyarnym krugom’ is replaced at the end by an image of confinement,
‘zamknuta’ (closed). This shift across the poem reflects the contrast between
commonly-held ideas about the area and first-hand experience of its reality.
This ‘reality’ of the North is depicted in the spectacle of the drunks who are
wheeling out of control on Saturdays. The description of them as ‘ground
pilots’ captures the irony of their grand designs and actual impotence; the
phrase ‘in a loop’ is similarly double-edged, suggesting both loop-the-loops
in the air and suicide on the ground. Later, the comic image of them as roly-
poly toys, which right themselves when they are pushed over, is unsettled
by the violence of one merrily breaking his wife’s jaw. The regional banner
made of the torn jacket of a zek (GULag prisoner) and the local dialect
of swear words are similarly grotesque images of the region’s identity and
point to the reality of its GULag population. While neither seems a likely
source of local pride and identity, the grandiose imperatives ‘razvevaisya’
(flutter) and ‘razvivaites'’ (develop) ironically elevate these symbols of
impoverishment and brutality.
The portraits of these Northern characters are a comment on the
deprivation of the USSR’s rural, outlying regions, but the comic and gro-
tesque world created here is not restricted to a social message. In the last
four lines, the return to the opening phrase ‘Za polyarnym krugom’ sig-
nals a shift from the detailed description of the drunks and their lives to
a more general evocation of the North’s atmosphere and significance. The
190 Chapter 4
address to a ‘Creator’ introduces a new perspective on the life which has

been described, moving from grotesque description to an evocation of
pathos in this Northern life and landscape. This is a place, the last lines
of the poem imply, where even a deity’s potency is circumscribed by the
harsh environment.
The power invested in the northern landscape is akin to enchantment:
details such as the grotesque ‘ground pilots’ and, in ‘O noch' Sibirskaya’
(‘O Siberian night!’), the mystery of unexplained mass suicides, create a
fabulous or dreamlike quality in the collection. There is a blend of fantasy
and reality in the grotesque characters, powerful and eerie landscapes, and
fairytale places such as the ‘Dom nadezhd’ (‘House of hopes’) – a utopian
house full of pleasures and virtue. There is also a dream or fairytale-like
logic that prevails in the reasoning of poems such as ‘Kuda bezhish', khu-
dozhnik bednyi’ (‘Where are you running, poor artist’):
Как ни беги,–
убьют, как жабу
вблизи полночных полнолуний,
отважная убьет кинжалом,
стеснительная – поцелуем.
No matter how you run, they’ll kill you, like a toad,/ close to the midnight full
moons,/ the brave woman will kill you with a dagger,/ the shy one with a kiss.
These qualities recall the title of the collection – Daydream – but charac-
terise Sosnora’s other work as well. In Kniga yuga, characters taken from
classical myths are also grotesque and fantastic, but belong to the South,
and the literary heritage of the classical World.
In Kniga yuga life merges with legend. Fantastic or fictional elements
blend with images and characteristics of the contemporary world; in par-
ticular, mythical characters are found in apparently modern contexts. In the
poem ‘Kentavry’ (‘Centaurs’), four stanzas give four snapshots of centaur
society that is quite removed from myth and the classical world. A little girl,
a young man, the old, and adults find their places in modern society:
Viktor Sosnora 191
КЕНТАВРЫ
Все мы немножко лошади.

Каждый по-своему лошадь.
В. Маяковский
Девочка! Ты разве не кобылица?

Не кобыльи бедра? Ноздри? Вены?
Не кобыльи губы? Габариты?
Ржаньем насыщаешь атмосферу!
Юноша! Ты не жеребенок разве?

Извлекал питательные корни?
Трогал ипподромы чистокровьем расы?
чтобы в скором времени
выйти в кони?
В кладовых колдуют костлявые клячи,

сосредоточив бережливые лица.
Мерин персональную пенсию клянчит,
как проникновенно,
так и лирично.
Взрослые участвуют в учрежденьях:

в заревах кредитов – Гоги да Магоги,
в кардинальных зарослях учений, –
первые – герои,
вторые – демагоги.
Здесь и расхожденья детей с отцами:

у кого изысканнее катары?
Здесь происхожденья не отрицают.

Именуют честно себя:
кентавры.
192 Chapter 4
Centaurs
There’s a bit of horse in all of us. Everyone’s a horse in his own way. V. Mayakovsky
Girl! Aren’t you a filly?/ Aren’t those a filly’s thighs? Nostrils? Veins?/ Aren’t they a fil-
ly’s lips? Dimensions?/ You’re loading the atmosphere with neighing!// Youth! Aren’t
you a foal?/ Haven’t you pulled out the roots that fed you?/ Haven’t you touched the
hippodrome with the pure-blood of your race?/ So that you can grow up fast to be
a horse?// In the storerooms the bony nags conjure,/ concentrating thrifty faces./ A
gelding begs for a personal pension,/ as heartfelt as it is lyrical.// The adults participate
in institutions:/ in the blazes of credit they are Gogs and Magogs,/ in the principal
offshoots of learning/ the first are heroes and the second demagogues.// Here the
children depart from their fathers:/ who are the more accomplished Cathars?/ Here
no one denies ancestry./ They candidly call themselves centaurs.
The young girl in the first stanza is challenged to recognise the physical
qualities she has that are horse-like: her thighs, nostrils, veins, lips and in
general the scale of her body. The diminutive ‘devochka’ (little girl) contrasts
with the strong physical presence that is described and suggests that for the
girl her body is a constant and unwelcome reminder of her difference from
most people. In the second stanza, the young male centaur is challenged
as to whether or not he is a foal, and it is suggested that he is also uneasy
about his identity: he is asked if he has searched for his roots, suggesting
he is reluctant to examine his ancestry. He has raced at the hippodromes
to prove he can legitimately belong among horses: although he stands out
as a centaur and therefore an outsider, nonetheless he hopes to move up in
the horse world. Sosnora’s pun ‘v skorom vremeni / vyiti v koni’ (grow up
fast to be a horse) describes winning races but also suggests speedy social
advancement to the upper echelons of equestrian society.
These members of the younger generation are shown as struggling to
accept the fact of their difference from the majority in their society. In the
following two stanzas, the older generations are, by contrast, more settled
in their relationships with the society they belong to. The oldest centaurs –
described as ‘nags’ and ‘geldings’ – inhabit a domestic setting. The women
are engaged in ‘sorcery in the pantry’, cooking food that is perhaps different
from the usual: there is a suggestion that they still preserve ‘centaur’ culi-
nary traditions. The men, meanwhile, are busy securing their income. Now
impotent in their old age with their physical strength gone, their powers of
Viktor Sosnora 193
persuasion are reduced to words which they use to beg for their pensions.
The image is of a group dependent on the society to which they belong but
still preserving a distinct way of life in the domestic sphere.
Finally, in the fourth stanza, we learn that the adult centaurs work in
institutions: in banks and universities. Sosnora’s elaborate and metaphori-
cal descriptions of bankers as ‘guarding giants of the blazes of credit’ and
universities as ‘the principal thickets of academia’ render them as strange
and fantastic as the centaurs themselves. Through these fantastic characters
and metaphors, however, there still obtains an image a group of outsiders
that has become integrated into a society.
The centaurs, like many minority groups in societies, are concerned
to preserve their identity and yet to integrate and be accepted. Typically,
it is the young who struggle with their individual identity and the old
who have established their positions. This split between the generations
is explicitly addressed in the first of the two couplets that finish the poem:
the generations apparently compete with each other about their sufferings
and difficulties. The image of Cathars here seems to stand for a persecuted
minority, and is a label that both older and younger centaurs argue is most
applicable to themselves. In the final couplet, however, the sense of identity
as centaurs is apparently shared across generations. The sense of unity within
the centaur society finally emerges as stronger than its divisions.
The predicament of these mythical characters is a phenomenon expe-
rienced by many groups who have existed as minorities within a society
at various times. In particular, the references to banking and education
as professions suggest that the centaurs have much in common with Jews
who, in Soviet society, were considered a minority and could be alienated
by anti-Semitism that insisted on their difference. Yet the epigraph from
Mayakovsky also points to alienation and the need to belong as universal
human conditions. Myths have always been used by poets to point from
the particular to the universal, and here Sosnora uses centaurs to embody
universal conditions of alienation and integration. There is no trace of
the classical myth in the poem: the centaurs’ society and lives are entirely
imagined by the poet to suit his purpose.
There is a similarly tenuous link with myth in the poem ‘Tsiklopy’
(‘Cyclopses’). While the eponymous characters here are indeed Cyclopses,
194 Chapter 4
again, their world and its story of how their congress decided people should
have only one eye does not come from myth.12 Sosnora’s Cyclopses are bureau-
cratic creatures that seek equality in life; they see the two eyes that people
have as a luxury, and decide these should be joined to make just one. It is not
difficult to see in the tale of the congress of the Cyclopses, with its debates,
resolutions and decisions, an ironic comment on slavishness to ideas and
principles that creates nightmare bureaucracy and allows rationality and
common sense to be disregarded and cruelty to be tolerated. The indifference
of people to this debate and decision about their eyes is equally suggestive:
Зачем человечество лечится, ест,

эстетствует,
строит,
зевает?
О том, что циклопический съезд,
зачем не подозревает?
Why does humanity get treated, eat,/ aestheticize, build, yawn?/ Why does the
Cyclopses’ congress/ not raise its suspicions?
They ignore at their peril apparently well-meaning legislation brought in

by those obsessed with the idea of equality.
‘Prokrustovo lozhe’ (‘The bed of Procrustes’), a re-telling of the myth-
ological Procrustes’s obsession with making people all the same size, is
another poem which suggests that an obsession with equality can lead to
tyranny, and contains thinly-veiled criticism of the Soviet system here. The
title is also a well-known phrase used to comment on inflexible, draconian
demands and conditions. There are more tyrannical characters in the col-
lection 12 Sov, also written in 1963, which describes a world in which ruling
owls maintain power over the population through terror. The hegemony
12 In fact, it seems likely that Sosnora took the idea from a poem by Nikolai Glazkov’s
poem ‘Reshil gospod' vnezapno, srazu’ (‘The Lord decided suddenly, immediately’).
I came across this poem in translation, in Albert C. Todd and Max Hayward, eds,
Twentieth-Century Russian Poetry (London: Fourth Estate, 1993), p. 660.
Viktor Sosnora 195
of the owls is characterised as a police state: in some poems it is specifically

Peter the Great’s St Petersburg; in one it is the city under Nazi rule. Among
the other poems are portraits of the ruling owls that concentrate on par-
ticular features: in one it is the owls’ own fear, in another their marching,
and one describes a fantastic vision of owl, cat and mouse changing sizes
and roles on the roof at midnight. The collection overall is concerned with
the exercise, abuse, and trappings of power. Similar to Tietta and Kniga
yuga, these themes are explored through a blend of fantasy and recognis-
able elements of reality, with the owls forming a new dimension of the
invention and imagination of Sosnora’s poetic world.
The world of Sosnora’s poetry in these collections of 1963 is fantastic,
inhabited by grotesque characters, animals personified, and mythical beings.
In a reflection of this varied and exotic range of characters and images, the
formal execution of the poems is as varied and innovative as Sosnora’s ear-
lier works: his language is heavily alliterative and rich in sound patterning,
and the use of metre and rhythm is still varied and complex. Put together,
these elements combine in flamboyant, exuberant work that delights in its
own richness, excess detail, inventiveness and quirkiness apparently for its
own sake. At another level, however, themes of human society and power,
with the forces of history and tradition acting upon them, emerge: for
example the relationship between people and their landscape; the plight
of perpetual outsiders in society; the allure of power that legitimises state
violence throughout history. The fantasy and flamboyance of language and
imagery contrast sharply with serious themes, each throwing the other into
sharp relief and creating complex and conflicting images of the world.
New Themes from Old Poets
In 1965, in the collection Temy (Themes), Sosnora moved away from the
models of the language and prosody of medieval Russian poetry and Russian
Futurism, and turned his attention instead to themes from nineteenth-
and twentieth-century Russian poetry. This was a significant change in
196 Chapter 4
direction. The mostly narrative poems of this collection use predominantly

iambic metres (especially iambic tetrameter), make references to Pushkin
and Lermontov among others, and commonly use four-line stanzas with
alternating rhyme. In turning to the tradition of nineteenth-century narra-
tive verse, Sosnora writes with different concerns, including Romanticism
and narrative point of view.
The long poems ‘Fontan slez’ (‘Fountain of tears’) and ‘Tsygane’ (‘The
gypsies’) from this collection are inspired by two of Pushkin’s southern
poems, ‘Bakhchisaraiskii fontan’ (‘The fountain of Bakhchisarai’) (1821–3)
and ‘Tsygany’ (‘The gypsies’) (1824). Both use Pushkin’s characters and plot,
but construct a new version of the narrative. Sosnora recasts the stories in
a different key: the Romanticism of Pushkin’s works is played down, and
instead, both occur in a world where there is a more pragmatic view of life
which leaves no room for Romantic sensibilities. The pathos of the Khan’s
story in ‘Fontan slez’, and the allure of the gypsies in ‘Tsygane’ are all but
lost, replaced by a pragmatic and prosaic view of life.
For Pushkin, the story of Khan Girei and the fountain of tears at
Bakhchisarai represented the exoticism of the East, and he created a Byronic
figure in the Khan and Romantic extremes of emotion in the two women
of opposite natures, Zarema and Mariya. In Sosnora’s retelling of the story,
which perhaps is closer to the original legend of the fountain, the dramatic
tension in the story exists between Khan Girei and an unnamed woman
who loves him although she knows she should detest him. The woman is
dying, and in the knowledge that she will soon die she finds the courage
to confront the Khan with the stark assertion that she should have killed
him because of his cruelty to her. After her outburst, he cares for her until
she dies, performs her burial rites, and carves a memorial to her in the form
of a fountain of tears.
In common with Pushkin’s work, Sosnora’s poem features dramatic
and exotic language and imagery that emphasises the otherness of the
Tartar world: its opulence, power, and despotism. The first stanza uses
alliteration to emphasise foreign-sounding words and the sumptuousness
of riches and power:
Viktor Sosnora 197
Бахчисарай! Твой храбрый хан

в одно мгновенье обесценил
монеты римлян и армян
и инструменты Авиценны …
Bakhchisarai! Your brave khan/ in an instant lessened the value/ of the coins of the
Romans and Armenians/ and the instruments of Avicenna …
After the eloquent descriptions of the terror and despotism of the Khan’s
rule and the subservience of his subjects which open the poem, the dying
woman makes her speech at the Khan’s feast. From this point on, this
powerful ruler devotes his attention to her while members of his court
raise their eyebrows. From images of might, tyranny and abundance, the
poem moves to describing his care and devotion to this woman he loves.
Finally, once the fountain has been carved, the Khan prays to Allah and
speaks of his own metaphorical transformation into a fountain of tears, a
state of permanent grieving:
Аллах, – сказал он, – больше звезд

в моей судьбе уже не светит.
Да буду я фонтаном слез!
– Да будешь! – так Аллах ответил.
‘Allah’, he said, ‘no more stars/ will shine in my fate./ I shall be a fountain of tears!’/
‘Yes, you will!’ Allah replied.
While Pushkin’s ‘Bakhchisaraiskii fontan’ is mainly concerned with

the characters of two women, Sosnora’s poem focuses on the character of
the Khan, who emerges as a less mysterious, more tragic than Romantic
character. Sosnora does not allow the poem to grow into a tragedy, how-
ever, since it does not conclude with the Khan’s sorrow. Instead, after the
denouement of the main narrative plot, the poem turns its attention to
Bakhchisarai: to incidental characters who constitute, as it were, the chorus
of this tragedy:
198 Chapter 4
Когда узнал Бахчисарай,

татары мысли развивали,
к утру утих собачий лай,
все
очаги разогревали.
Торговец стриг своих овец.

У тиглей хлопотал кузнец.
Жемчуголов ловил свой перл.

Рабы свою баржу смолили.
Лишь муэдзин молитву пел

и поздравлял татар с молитвой.
When Bakhchisarai found out,/ the Tartars thought about it,/ towards dawn the dogs’
barking quietened,/ all the hearths were heated once more.// A trader sheared his
sheep./ The smith worked at his crucible.// The pearl divers fished for their pearls./
Slaves caulked their barges.// Only the muezzin sang a prayer/ and congratulated
the Tartars on their prayers.
The individual’s plight is quickly forgotten in this broader picture of society in

which no one is moved by the events described. This is in great contrast to the
ending of Pushkin’s poem, in which the poet visits the ruins of Bakhchisarai
many years later and is still moved by the story of the fountain.
Sosnora’s re-telling of Pushkin’s ‘Tsygany’ also presents a world in which
there is apparently no room for tragedy. In this version of the story, Aleko
is a supremely rational and rather ordinary character, quite devoid of the
Romantic passions Pushkin’s character possesses. In section one, when he
discovers Zemfira’s infidelity, he does not fly into a rage, but understands
it with a banal tautology:
Ему не драки, не вина,

Он констатирует уныло:
– Моя Земфира неверна
ввиду того, что изменила.
Viktor Sosnora 199
No fights for him, no wine,/ he states wearily:/ ‘My Zemfira is unfaithful/ in view
of the fact that she cheated on me.’
Like Pushkin’s Aleko, Sosnora’s character is critical of the gypsies because

they do not conform to his values; Sosnora’s Aleko, however, represents
an explicitly Soviet character, and apparently cannot accommodate pas-
sions, irrationality, or tragedy. His values are described with unmistakeably
Soviet vocabulary:
Мы исполнительно живем,
и результат – не жизнь, а праздник!
Живем себе и хлеб жуем.
Прекрасно все. И мы – прекрасны!
Мы все трудящиеся львы.

Одни цыгане – тунеядцы.
Идеология любви,
естественно, им непонятно.
We live executively,/ and the result is not life, but a holiday!/ We live our lives
and eat our bread./ Everything is wonderful. And we are wonderful!// We are all
lions of labour./ Only the gypsies are parasites./ The ideology of love,/ naturally, is
incomprehensible to them.
Sosnora humorously resolves the Romanticism and difficulties of Pushkin’s

Aleko through this ‘ideological’ interpretation of love that trivialises the
vision of a socialist society with its mandatory emphasis on work and indus-
triousness, and promulgation of an expedient ‘harmony’ that avoids social,
political and emotional discord. Political jargon such as ‘ideologiya’ (ideol-
ogy), ‘tuneyadets’ (parasite), and ‘ispolnitel'no’ (executively) belongs to the
language of this society, so that here again, more explicitly than in ‘Fontan
slez’, Sosnora implies that Soviet society has no room for Romanticism or
its attendant tragedy.
In the final section, following Aleko’s self-satisfied, complacent extol-
ling of the virtues of this industrious society, another voice emerges, and
laments the disappearing world of the gypsies. Exclamations imitate the
200 Chapter 4
energy and vitality of the gypsies’ music, and the speaker laments that
normal women cannot measure up to their gypsy counterparts:
Играй гитара!
Пой, цыган!
Журчите, струны, как цикады!
Все наши женщины – обман.
Их поцелуи – как цитаты.
Они участвуют всерьез

в строительстве семей,
все меньше
цыганских глаз,
цыганских слез,
цыганской музыки и женщин.
И я один. В моей груди

звучат цыганские молитвы.
Да семиструнные дожди
дрожат за окнами моими.
Play, guitar! Sing, gypsy!/ Chatter, strings, like cicadas!/ All our women are false,/
their kisses like citations.// They take seriously their part/ in the building of the
family, there’s fewer and fewer/ gypsy eyes,/ gypsy tears,/ gypsy music and women.//
And I am alone. In my chest/ gypsy prayers are sounding./ And the seven stringed
rain/ is vibrating outside my windows.
Here the adage that all women are false is used to suggest not that women
in the persona’s society are likely to commit adultery, but that they are all
boring and somehow lacking in genuine character or feeling: they are all
no more than copies or citations from the real thing. Their serious partici-
pation in the ‘construction of the family’ recalls the language used earlier
in the poem to describe the industrious and productive society to which
Aleko belongs. Gypsy women, by contrast, are ‘genuine’ types that appar-
ently do not exist in Soviet society. Although suffering from a narrow and
patronising view of women, this voice is not really interested in attacking
Viktor Sosnora 201
them on the grounds of their sex or their attitudes. Rather, he uses this
contrast between two distinct types to emphasise the extent to which in his
society the state directs all aspects of life, even family and sexual relations.
It is a dystopian image in which human emotions and lives are reduced to
the utilitarian needs of the state, and the individual can only lament the
passing of better days.
Ultimately, the speaker finds himself in the position that Aleko occu-
pies at the outset of Pushkin’s poem: he thirsts for freedom and a ‘genuine’
life that he does not see in his society. Not only does Sosnora present us
with a dystopian vision of a society that finds no room for individuals who
do not conform, he also suggests that in this situation the Romantic indi-
vidual hero will again find himself alienated and alone in his own society.
The circle is not complete, but playfully left open: Sosnora’s lyric persona
who hankers after the freedom of the gypsies may indeed be truly alien-
ated from the utilitarian thinking of Soviet society, or he may rebel only to
discover that the freedoms of the other world are alien and too challenging
for him, as they were for Pushkin’s Aleko.
In the collection ‘Temy’, Sosnora self-consciously takes on the legacy
of the ‘classical’ tradition in Russian poetry, and in particular of Pushkin.
This legacy appears not only in the more ‘classical’ form of the poems, but
also in the development of a new theme for Sosnora: the figure of the poet
and his position in society. This theme continues to be important, and is
developed along with ideas about art, the artist, society, and moral purpose
in the poems of the 1970s. At the same time, however, themes and ideas are
only part of the picture. Like many poets, he pulls in two directions in his
poetry: on the one hand, he makes social and political comment, taking
on weighty questions such as social problems, or the meaning of art and
its relationship to truth, in particular in the context of the USSR; on the
other hand, his poems are aesthetic, enjoying the alliterative and rhythmic
resources of the Russian language and describing fanciful worlds and scenes.
The socially conscious side to his work is important in Tietta and Kniga
yuga of 1963, and to a lesser extent in 12 sov; concerns about the nature of
society are explored in some poems of Temy as well and they return in the
collections Prodolzhenie (Continuation) and Znaki (Signs) of the early
1970s. In 1969, by contrast, the collection P'yanyi angel (Drunken angel ) is
202 Chapter 4
purely lyrical and fanciful, with no apparent concern for political or social
questions.
The title of this collection is significant. The ‘drunken angel’ seems at
times the muse, at times the alter ego of the poet, and represents a submis-
sion to whimsy and rejection of responsibility. He is devilish and at the
same time cherubic, chaotic, creative, and unpredictable, representing a free
spirit in the sense that he is free from moral values and concerns. Liberated
from social and political themes, the poems relish contrasts in style, emo-
tions, symbols, and contradictions. Their language is playful, rich in rhymes
and play with the roots of words such as we saw in Sosnora’s earlier work.
In this sense, they are a return to the highly aesthetic and lyrical style of
Vsadniki and V poiskakh razvlechenii.
The persona speaks with a sweeping sense of the world, beginning the
opening poem with ‘Vo vsei vselennoi byl bedlam’ (‘In all the universe there
was bedlam’). His poetic vision is not focussed on a recognisable world of
contemporary Russia, nor on discrete individuals or narratives; rather, he
speaks of his soul, his fate, the drunken angel, and of universal battles. Even
in the second poem, the only one in which one can recognise elements of
Soviet life, Russia is only the background to an apparently drunken journey
that ends with a vision of the angel:
Вот было веселье

(Толпа – протоплазма!)
вчера во вселенной
был ад или праздник.
Какой-то уродец
какого-то класса
каким-то народам
по радио клялся.
Народы замерзли,
туда и обратно
несли зынамены
и тыранспаранты.
Viktor Sosnora 203
По счастью шабаша
(Фанфары – фальцетом!)
плясали на башнях
пятьсот полицейских.
Я, пьяный и красный
(глаза – Саваофа!)
шатался по кассам
и по стадионам:
«Мир, Равенство, Братство!»–

кабацкое племя,
кабацкое блядство,
кабацкое время!
Я страшно согрелся.
На лестнице гнусной
светил сигареткой …
Потом я очнулся.
Где вина? Где донны?

Где я? Неизвестно.
Две звездочки только,
два глаза небесных.
И не было Феба
и радиоарий.
По нежному небу
летал пьяный ангел.
Простор предрассветный.
На крыльях по лампе.
Летал он, предсмертный,
и, может быть, плакал.
204 Chapter 4
А может быть, может,

над нашими льдами
душа моя тоже
летает, летает …
А может, из странствий
я так возвращался,
а может, в пространстве
я так воскрешался.
That was some fun/ (the crowd was protoplasm!)/ – yesterday in the universe/ it
was either hell or a holiday.// Some freak/ of some class/ was on the radio/ taking
an oath to some peoples.// The peoples were freezing,/ carrying flags and banners/
there and back.// Luckily for the orgy/ (the fanfares were a falsetto!)/ five hundred
policemen/ were dancing on the towers.// I was drunk and red/ (eyes of Saboath!),/ I
reeled around the ticket offices/ and the stadiums:// ‘Peace, Equality, and Fraternity’/
– a public-house tribe,/ public-house whoring,/ a public-house age!// I warmed up
wonderfully./ On a foul staircase/ I shone with my cigarette …/ Then I came round.//
Where’s the wine? Where are the donnas?/ Where am I? Don’t know./ Only two
little stars,/ two heavenly eyes.// And there was no Phoebus/ or radio arias./ Across
the tender sky/ flew the drunk angel.// The expanse before dawn./ On wings by the
lamp./ He flew, dying,/ and perhaps he wept.// And perhaps, perhaps/ above our
ice/ my soul also/ flies, flies …// And perhaps from my wanderings/ I have already
returned,/ but perhaps in the open space/ I rose again.
The poem captures a reeling drunken gaze grasping an impressionistic view

of a public holiday. While repetitions in stanza 2 seemed to express indif-
ference to the official speech on the radio, the rhymes and alliteration in
stanza 4 create an exaggeratedly vivid sense of the scene. Extra syllables in
the words ‘znameni’ (banners) and ‘transparanty’ (flags) in stanza 3 add
to this vivid effect, suggesting shivering from the cold or slurred speech
from the alcohol. There is a sense that the persona responds to what he
sees around him with immediacy and spontaneity, even to the slogan ‘Mir,
Ravenstvo, Bratstvo’ (‘Peace, Equality, Fraternity’) which arouses contempt
for the society he sees before him.
Though describing a political parade, Sosnora does not engage with
political questions. In stanza 7, he describes returning to consciousness in
Viktor Sosnora 205
a new setting – in a dark and foul stairwell – and leaves the crowd, and
thoughts of society or politics behind. In this second half of the poem the
tone gradually changes, and the vision broadens: while at first in his drunken
state he seems to search for revelry – wine and women – he is soon drawn
to the night sky, and the drunken angel that flies there. The angel seems
to be a continuation of him, an expression of his soul and his emotions,
which elevate him from the revelry of the parade to a reverie. By the final
stanza, the drunkenness in the poem has taken on a new complexion: it
is now an expansive state in which the persona feels his soul is flying and
that he has been reborn.
The lyrical moods of P'yanyi angel include the yearning, sadness, and
elation touched upon in this poem and many others as well. The collec-
tion is characterized by a voice that shifts quickly from subject to subject,
as his thoughts wander. He continues to create other strange characters
and beings such as the owl that wears spurs and rides a steed. At the same
time, as in earlier poems, he takes characters from literature and the Bible,
with Mephistopheles, Pygmalion, and Christ, Barabbas, and Judas. The
freedom, even abandon that characterizes the poems lies at the heart of
Sosnora’s poetry, and the symbol of the drunken angel symbolizes the
relinquishing of control and restraint, allowing a more impulsive, free, and
impressionistic voice to emerge.
The 1970s: Major Poems and Themes
At the beginning of the 1970s Sosnora began to manage ambitious and

complex poems. The collections Prodolzhenie and Znaki, in particular,
synthesise formal elements and thematic concerns developed across ear-
lier poems such as distinctive use of language, innovative rhyme, varied
rhythms, literary self-consciousness, and complex themes and subjects.
Literary, religious and fantastic characters remain an important feature of
Sosnora’s work. In these collections, longer poems are often more success-
ful than those of the 1960s: they are more tightly structured and exhibit
206 Chapter 4
more complex development of ideas, images and themes. A good example

of this kind of sophisticated poem is ‘Ispoved' Dedala’ (‘The confession of
Daedalus’): written in 1970, it is a substantial work of seventeen six-line
stanzas written in iambic pentameter. In contrast with the impressionis-
tic mood of P'yanyi angel, it puts forward a structure argument about the
value of art and the artist.
Sosnora’s Daedalus presents himself as ‘lish' Dedal, dostoinyi lish'
Aida’; (Only Daedalus, worthy only of Hades), emphasising his mortality
and humility. While he makes implicit references to the mythical Daedalus
glorified in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, famous for the wings he built to escape
from Crete, these events are recalled across the poem only elliptically and
fragmentarily; Daedalus claims he can hardly remember them:
Все после – Минос, крылья, смерть Икара …

Не помню или помню кое-как.
Everything later – Minos, the wings, the death of Icarus …/ I don’t remember, or
remember only vaguely.
The mythical story does not define his life. Instead, his murder of Talos,
committed earlier in his life and for which he was exiled to Crete, looms
large in his memory. He is exercised by the fact that the murder has been
forgotten by ‘idolisers’ – historians or myth-makers – while the wings he
constructed for himself and his son are immortal:
Но идолопоклонники Эллады
про Тала позабыли, а крылатость
мою,
провозгласили на века.
But the idolaters of Hellas/ forgot about Talos, and proclaimed my winged state
for the ages.
The poem is about the relationship of the truth and history to art,
myth and fiction. The fact that the process of myth-making has colluded
with Daedalus’s treachery by forgetting his crime and remembering and
Viktor Sosnora 207
celebrating his labyrinth and construction of the wings is, for him, an
indictment of the people who eagerly believe the myths:
Смешные! Дети-люди! Стоит запись

в истории оставить всем на зависть,
толпа в священном трепете – Талант! –
И вот уже и коридоры Крита,
и вот мои мифические крылья,
«да не судим убийца – он крылат!»
Silly things! Child-people! You have only/ to leave a note in history for everybody to
envy,/ and the crowd in holy trepidation cry ‘Talent!’,/ and there are the corridors of
Crete,/ and my mythical wings,/ ‘but the murderer is not judged, he has wings!’
The image of winged Daedalus resonates here as a saintly figure, adding to

the irony of the situation in which people are so seduced by talent or art
that they ignore a cautionary tale about the evils of envy that Daedalus’s
life presents.
The story of Talos’s murder and Daedalus’s later fame raises the ques-
tion of what has more value, an individual life or an artefact produced by
a great and famous talent:
Кому оставить жить – какой-то розе

или фигуре Фидия из бронзы?
Не дрогнув сердцем, говорю – цветку.
Whose life would you spare – some rose/ or a bronze figure by Phidias?/ My heart
does not tremble when I say: ‘the flower.’
Daedalus privileges ‘some rose or other’ – an indefinite, unremarkable

plant – over the work of the greatest sculptor of the classical world. The
sculpture that represents Phidias is, for Daedalus, only ‘marble’, it represents
fame, but even Phidias’s fame is subject to the processes of time. Creators
and artists are eventually forgotten, leaving their creations behind like
dead bodies:
208 Chapter 4
Кто архитектор, автор Пирамиды?

Где гении чудес Семирамиды?
О Вавилонской башни блеск и крах!
Где библии бесчисленных отечеств,
переселенье душ библиотеки
Александрийской?
Все, простите, прах.
Who is the architect, author of the Pyramids?/ Where are the geniuses of the wonders
of Semiramis?/ The brilliance and collapse of the Tower of Babylon!/ Where are the
bibles of innumerable fatherlands,/ the transmigration of souls of the Alexandrian
library? Forgive me, but all is dust.
The process of being forgotten is akin to the process of decay to which

no artist is immune. In fact, Daedalus goes on, art is destined to decay and
be forgotten and, as such, the process of art is always one of self-destruc-
tion. He argues that the effort to preserve fame is like the tower of Babel,
or Orpheus glancing back at Eurydice: they will in fact lead to failure and
oblivion. For Daedalus, the murder of Talos, by which he aimed to estab-
lish his reputation as the greatest inventor, led to his life and achievements
before his exile to Crete being forgotten.
Daedalus’s conclusion reiterates that the figure of the artist is not
immortal, and that his creations are inferior to the living creations of the
gods; that the artist is tragically circumscribed by his mortality, and the
perfection of immortal art is perpetually elusive:
Все, что вдохнуло раз, – творенье Геи.

Я – лишь Дедал. И никакой не гений.
И никакого нимба надо мной.
Я только древний раб труда и скорби,
искусство – икс, не найденный искомый,
и бьются насмерть гений и законы …
И никому бессмертья не дано.
Everything that ever took breath is the creation of Gaia./ I am just Daedalus. And
no genius./ And there’s no halo above me./ I’m just an ancient slave of work and
Viktor Sosnora 209
grief,/ art is the ‘x’, the answer sought but not found,/ and genius and rules fight to
the death …/ and no one is given immortality.
In the end, he suggests art, artists, history, culture and all human soci-
ety are subject to the ravages of time and cannot hope to escape eventual
oblivion. Since art and artists are below an immortal god, Sosnora implies
that talent and art do not have the kind of moral authority invested in a
deity. He rejects the idea that artists are privileged as arbiters of morality,
and in doing so, releases himself from a moral obligation in poetry. He may
seem to diminish the status of poetry, but he also declares that his vocation
of poet does not require him to be a moral force for good.
This position is consistent with the more aesthetic, lyrical tendency
in Sosnora’s work such as is found in P'yanyi angel, in which the poet
embraces a devilish muse and celebrates chaos and creativity freed from
moral constraints. The poem ‘Iskusstvo – svyatynya dlya durakov’ (‘Art is
a sanctum for fools’) also comments on the tendency to equate art with
moral force. It suggests fools invest art with sacred meaning, and admits
that the aesthetic power of evil is as compelling and as much a part of art as
that of good. In these works, Sosnora suggests that art needs to be free to
find its full expression, and implicitly polemicises with the Soviet elevation
of writers to figures of moral authority, the ‘engineers of human souls’. As
with ‘Fontan slez’ and ‘Bakhchisarai’, the full import of his ideas in these
poems cannot be appreciated without an understanding of the context in
which they were written.
From the early 1960s on, Sosnora was writing long, obscure and appar-
ently hermetic poems. They are usually written from a lyric ‘I’, and are more
difficult and obscure than his shorter works: they elude analysis in terms of
themes and subject because these are not the basic elements of the poems.
Often they develop with a dreamlike movement or logic, and in places are
distinctly hallucinatory. There are sudden and apparently unmotivated
shifts in subject and some passages in which details of mundane situations
are meticulously described to no apparent effect and in which fantastic
elements merge seamlessly with everyday situations.
This style of poem is found especially in the Poemy i ritmicheskie
rasskazy (Poems and rhythmic stories) written 1963–4 and the 1967 collection
210 Chapter 4
Khronika 67 (Chronicle 67). Arguably, many of these poems are not success-
ful: their lack of structure means that they jump between fanciful images,
are not convincing aesthetically, and do not present any kind of argument.
One of the major poems in Znaki, ‘Ritoricheskaya poema’ (‘Rhetorical
poem’), belongs to this vein of Sosnora’s work. It is characterised by frequent
changes in subject and the juxtaposition of mundane imagery with gro-
tesque, fantastic, and nightmarish elements. Although in places hermetic,
through a patchwork of images, scenes and slogans it portrays elements of
contemporary Soviet life. At points an argument surfaces in the poem, but
overall it is too complex and eventually loses its way in mystic interpretations
of abbreviations and symbols. Like many of these long, rambling works, the
poem is not satisfactorily finished or polished, but it does create arresting
images, and use a montage of language register to great effect.
A series of images and impressions express the speaker’s sense of life in
the USSR, and some of these are striking: in the first section, his picture
of the world has a naïve, childish quality that chimes with Soviet idealism
and the innocence that accompanies it. The description of the morning
city full of people going to work, apparently viewed from a height so that
things below appear diminutive, is infantilised and quite innocent :
… Уже из ульев улетели

трудящиеся на крылах похмелья,
белея белыми воротниками.
И пуговицами из перламутра,
и запонками, пряжками, замками
портфелей – был заполнен звоном воздух.
Теперь такси, как плитки шоколада,

блестят. Трамваи – детские игрушки:
колесики, скамеечки, звоночки.
Ларьки пивные в кружевых из злата.
Already the workers have flown from the hives/ on the wings of hangovers,/ with
their collars shining white./ And their mother-of-pearl buttons,/ cuff links, buck-
les, clasps/ on their briefcases – the air was filled with ringing.// Now the taxis are
Viktor Sosnora 211
shining like bars of chocolate./ The trams are children’s toys:/ their little wheels,
little benches, little bells./ Beer kiosks are dressed in gold lace.
This scene is interrupted and undone a few lines below, however, by a sur-
real and grotesque image that offends good taste and decent sensibilities:
the memorable image of a demonic, nightmarish little girl who is violent,
sexually provocative, murderous, drinks vodka, and has the grotesque detail
of a hangman’s rope still around her neck:
Я видел девочку с небритой мордой

лет девяти. Такая террористка.
Ей кто-то в пьяной драке вырвал клык.
Нас всех дразнили пунцовые перси
на малолетнем тельце. А она
бежала быстро в спущенных чулках
с бутылкой белой (там виднелась водка).
Она таилась сзади всей толпы,
по темени тихонько убивая
всех наших дядь и теть, и мам и пап.
Еще на этой журавлиной шейке
Веревочка от виселиц болталась.
Волшебница-дитя! Ты просто прелесть.
I saw a girl with an unshaven mug/ about nine years old. Such a little terrorist./
Someone had pulled out one of her fangs in a drunken brawl./ She teased us with
the crimson breasts/ on her young body. And she/ ran fast, stockings down,/ with
a white bottle (you could see vodka in it)./ She hid behind the crowd,/ quietly kill-
ing all our uncles and aunts, mums and dads,/ with blows to the back of the head./
And on her crane-like neck/ there was a hangman’s noose./ Sorceress-child! You’re
simply wonderful.
This character disrupts the earlier view of the morning city as a toy town;
she is an assault on our sensibilities, and Sosnora uses her to create the
uncomfortable sense of something very wrong and disturbing in the world
that he is describing.
212 Chapter 4
The language of this work also varies wildly, mixing registers and style.
Slogans are lifted out of context and added to the poem, bringing associa-
tions of Soviet life with them; snatches of conversation parody register and
tone that are identifiable with particular groups and ideas. In section 2, a
grotesque vision of old women sitting together complaining is a portrait of
self-righteousness and neo-Stalinist prejudices. The women are monstrous,
and, typically for Sosnora, they feature elements of mythical creatures and
at the same time are recognisable as typical old women sitting together on
the street and talking: they are thousands of years old, with lions’ eyes, one
hundred hands like the Hekatonchires of Greek mythology, one hundred
ears like the police, and one hundred eyes. In a parody of the neo-Stalinist
forces in society during the 1970s, they moan about dogs, the Jews, children,
and the lack of moral standards that communism promised to deliver. They
compose a letter of complaint to a legal institution:
что есть у нас идеи идеалов

но развит лишь разврат Псы жрут как люди
а люди – псами псы Не труд во имя
и не моральный кодекс а бардак
Детишки вместо школы там и тут
в свинарниках и свиньями растут
И вообще к несчастью нет жидов
по попустительству их опустили
И (извините!) все о Коммунизме
кто как и где попало говорят
не тот народ и вовсе нет любви
тем более что требуются тюрьмы
ЧТО Ж ВЕДЬ И ЖИЗНЬ НЕ ПРАЗДНИК А БОРЬБА

That we have ideas about ideals/ but only debauchery has developed Dogs gobble
like people/ and people are the real dogs Not labour in the name of/ and it’s not
the moral code but a hell of a mess/ Children are here and there instead of school/
in pigsties and growing into pigs/ And generally unfortunately there are no yids/
they let them out by neglect/ And (excuse us!) everything about Communism/ who
how and where anyhow they talk/ it’s the wrong people and there is no love at all/
Viktor Sosnora 213
especially as we need prisons/ AND AFTER ALL LIFE IS NOT A HOLIDAY

BUT A STRUGGLE
Here the lack of punctuation and distinctly colloquial expression exag-

gerates the impression of the impatience, indignation and zeal, yet lack of
refinement of the old women, and creates a satirical portrayal of the self-
appointed moral fibre of society. The women form part of the montage of
characters and voices in the poem.
While the argument is frequently obtuse, it is clear that, with his gro-
tesque characters and parody of empty slogans, Sosnora is fundamentally
taking issue with the ideology of the USSR and the society that has been
produced by that ideology. In section 3, the lyric persona describes his
apartment building: the state of the lifts, the cats vomiting on the stair-
well, invalids and rubbish chutes all contrast with the message that is being
broadcast on radios behind every door about heroic feats of labour. The
satire of the USSR continues with a panorama of various social groups:
the privileged elite who are the ‘favourites of the sky’ in their limousines
and offices, the poets or artists who are ‘potential suicides’, the workers
described as ‘tribes of labour and the happiness of the world’, and many
others. Despite their differences, all the groups have in common the indif-
ference of the state towards them:
… Мы и не мертвецы.
Нас вовсе нет, мы лишь плечом к плечу, –
консервы своего коллективизма.
Не человечество – мы только даты
рождений и смертей …
We are not even corpses./ We don’t exist at all, we’re only shoulder to shoulder/
the canned goods of our own collectivism./ Not humanity – we are only dates/ of
births and deaths …
The poem moves on to question why life has reached the state it has and why
the Creator has allowed things to develop as they have; when Sosnora moves
away from his comic and ironic, grotesque characters, however, his poetry
loses the most distinctive and effective features, and while other characters
214 Chapter 4
occur in the last three parts of the poem, he does not develop the same kinds
of powerful images, and the symbolism is less subtle and less effective.
The dense, strongly visual imagery with an admixture of irony and sur-
realism such as is found in ‘Ritoricheskaya poema’ is a hallmark of Sosnora’s
work. In particular, the characters that appear in the poems are vivid, varied,
and colourful. The girl and the old women, among the various characters
in the poem, are recognisable to some degree as a part of Soviet life but are
also transformed into grotesque caricatures. In other poems of the collection
Znaki, alongside these grotesque human characters are numerous animals.
These, too, can be traced back through Sosnora’s work, to the owls of 12 Sov
(1963), but also to wolves, centaurs, and others. The combination of their
animal characteristics and human behaviour creates sinister and arresting
images. In some more allegorical poems in Znaki, such as ‘Krasnyi sad’, there
is similar characterisation of animals, birds, and even the garden itself.
Sosnora seems most fluent when his poems feature visual imagery
and the description and creation of mood, as opposed to argument and
abstractions. The poem ‘Baltiiskoe’ (‘Baltic’), also from Znaki, uses exten-
sive metaphor to create an animated description of the sea; Sosnora is in
his element here, compounding visual images with alliteration and rhyme.
The poem is an aesthetic exploration, delighting in unusual images and
sounds, and unencumbered by abstract ideas, or a message:
Балтийское
Кто утром увидел море –

толпища какой-то пятой
голубой расы
(их волосы веселились!),
кто утром увидел чаек,

как они стояли
на валунах из меди и мела –
как статуэтки
из севрского фарфора
на ножках –
красных камышинках;
Viktor Sosnora 215
кто утром увидел дюны

пропитанные соком
песчаного меда,
а на дюнах улитки –
крохотные козочки
в древнеримских касках,
и еще моллюски –
мертвые очи моря,
распахнутые веки
раковин из перламутра;
кто утром увидел сосны

в китайских кружевах
просыпающейся хвои,
их золотые столбы –
как символы солнца;
кто утром увидел белок –

космические пляски
на крылышках пушистых
а шишки в объятьях лапок –
скипетры их маленьких
величеств …
Море замерзнет солью,

дюны распустят песчинки,
улитки и моллюски
вернутся в свои века, –
а кто не утратил утра,

умрет, – все равно воскреснет!
216 Chapter 4
Baltic
Whoever has seen the sea in the morning – /a great crowd of some fifth,/ pale blue
race/ (their hair was making merry!),// whoever has seen the gulls standing/ on
boulders of copper and chalk/ – like Sevres porcelain statuettes on legs of red reeds;//
whoever has seen the dunes in the morning,/ soaked with the juice/ of sandy honey,/
and on the dunes the snails,/ little goats/ in Roman helmets,// and the molluscs too,/
the dead eyes of the sea,/ the eyelids of mother-of-pearl shells open wide;// whoever
has seen the pine trees in the morning,/ in Chinese lace/ of awakening needles,/
their golden trunks/ are like symbols of the sun;// whoever has seen squirrels in the
morning –/ their cosmic dances on little furry wings,/ and the cones clutched in their
paws/ are sceptres of their tiny/ greatness …// The sea will freeze like salt,/ the dunes
will let grains of sand go,/ the snails and molluscs/ will return into their ages,// and
whoever has not missed the morning/ will die, but will rise again all the same!
The point of this poem is to describe a visual scene with dense and rich
imagery that brings it alive to the reader. Its animation, awareness of the
life and movement in a landscape or place, is part of the larger picture of
the world that is often grotesque and exaggerated, and in which mythical
creatures, animals, people, and historical characters coexist. In this often
surreal world, Sosnora’s characters and images offer scope for social and
political comment and allegory which at times are successful, but apart
from such concerns, and more importantly, the poems weave the fabric of
his idiosyncratic vision.
A New Sense of Himself
In 1973, Sosnora found a new focus for his work that replaced his broad range
of characters and concern with social and political questions. His first wife,
Marina, left him in the early 1970s; after this, he had an affair one summer,
and in the aftermath of this affair, he wrote the collection Tridtsat' sem' (Thirty
seven) (1973) and much of the subsequent Deva-ryba (Virgin-fish) (1974).
In this new phase of his work, Sosnora ceased writing ‘poetry of ideas’, and
allowed his lyrical voice and aesthetic vision to dominate. His vision of the
Viktor Sosnora 217
world is familiar from earlier poems, with grotesque or mythical characters,

the forest and its animals reminiscent of fables, hallucinatory, often night-
time scenes and many elements of Soviet life recognisable as well.
The poems are searching and self-reflective as never before; Sosnora’s
lyric voice becomes more prevalent in the poems when his thoughts, para-
noia, memories, and hallucinations are their subject. The first of the two
books in particular, Tridtsat' sem', closely follows twists and turns of emo-
tions and memories: there is a preoccupation with parting, finishing, death,
and separation. Up until this point, his poetry has been directed outward,
towards intellectual problems, social questions, the nature of art and its posi-
tion in society. Now his gaze turns inward, and the poems chart his some-
times painful, sometimes surreal progression through emotional turmoil
and the grief of separation. Such self-reflection and focussed preoccupation
gives these poems coherence that the earlier collections have sometimes
lacked; what is more, the tension between a focused subject and a search-
ing lyric persona plagued with self-doubt creates an energy in the poems
that places them among the best that Sosnora has written.
The collection is imbued with echoes from earlier Russian poetry,
including Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Marina
Tsvetaeva. These references establish Sosnora’s situation as not only a private
predicament but also a lyric position. The subjects of the aftermath of his
marriage and affair and his accompanying isolation become, through the
adoption of different lyric voices, a reflection of this experience through
the prism of Russian literature. The many echoes of Russian poets become
a way for him to explore reactions and evaluations of his life, since the
adoption of a literary persona involves the distancing of the self from the
subject. By writing in various poetic forms, Sosnora is able to manipulate
and recast his personal experience.
The voices in this collection range from a highly emotional, confes-
sional tone to a more literary and formal language and syntax. The poems
also vary in their density and obscurity. While some relive, describe, and
evoke the details of a summertime trip to the seaside during which the
break-up apparently occurred, others are more abstract, stylized or symbolic.
Although the collection reads like a cycle, there is little sense of progres-
sion from a chaotic and early emotional response to a later considered and
218 Chapter 4
measured view informed by hindsight. Instead, the poems fluctuate between,

on the one hand, acceptance and reconciliation with the loss and, on the
other, emotional outpourings of grief. In ‘Ot"ezd so vzmor'ya’ (‘Leaving the
coast’), for example, the lyric voice is halting and shifts suddenly from image
to image. It expresses the struggle to comprehend a parting. The speaker’s
thoughts jump from one subject to another, trying to settle upon some
kind of explanation, and the poem is characterised by ellipses pointing to
an ultimate failure to find resolution. It might be described as a ‘stream of
consciousness’: one image seems to lead to another through association, but
the poet’s thinking moves in circles, repeating the same phrases, returning
to the same subject, images, and the starting point of the separation.
By contrast, ‘Etot epilog’ (‘This epilogue’) is a polished work which,
with its opening command ‘Listen!’ and later imperatives and exclamations,
recalls Mayakovsky’s strident voice. Here there is no sense of emotional
confusion, images do not run into one another in a reflection of disjointed
and chaotic thought processes; rather, the persona lucidly analyses what
has happened and finds words and expressions to label, account for, even
lay claim to his position:
Слушай! я говорю – горе! – себя кляня,

В тридцать седьмой год от рожденья меня
благодарю вас, что и в любви – была.

Смейся! мой смертный час – не берегла.
О пустяк! предоставь мне самому мой крах.

Я, прости, перестал в этой любви в веках.
Мантию не менял. Пусть постоянен трон:

эта любовь – моя, и не твоя, не тронь.
Listen! I say ‘grief !’, cursing myself, in the thirty seventh year since my birth I thank
you, that in love, too, you were. Laugh!– in my fateful hour you were no saviour.
O, it’s nothing! leave my disaster to me. I, forgive me, stopped in this love still alive.
I haven’t changed the gown. Let the throne be permanent: this love is mine, not
yours, don’t touch.
Viktor Sosnora 219
The poem goes on in this exclamatory tone. The voice is assertive, almost
taunting his interlocutor with its robustness. This Mayakovskian voice
offers Sosnora a new position, as it were, in the same narrative as before.
Whereas in ‘Ot"ezd so vzmor'ya’ he responds to separation with emotion
hard to express, here the word ‘grief ’ is sung out in a poem whose fluency
belies any real sense of emotion. Instead of nuances of feeling, here we find
a strident voice that celebrates the strength of emotion that separation has
wrought in him. There is, as in Mayakovsky, a sense of relishing drama and
emotional scenes.
Other poems move through the styles of other Russian poets. ‘Ya tebya
otvoruyu u vsekh semei u vsekh nevest’ (‘I will steal you from all families
and all brides’), is a pastiche of Tsvetaeva’s ‘Ya tebya otvoyuyu u vsekh zemel'
u vsekh nebes’ (‘I will win you from all lands and all skies’), using the same
rhyming couplets, wide use of anaphora, abundant dashes and play on words.
‘Vse proshlo. Tak tikho na dushe’ (‘All has passed. My soul is so calm’), on
the other hand, consciously echoes Pasternak’s ‘Hamlet’. There are varia-
tions on Pushkin’s ‘Ya vas lyubil’ (‘I loved you’) and Lermontov’s ‘Vykhozhu
odin ya na dorogu’ (‘I walk alone out on to the road’) which enter into a
dialogue with canonical nineteenth-century poems. In Sosnora’s poem that
begins ‘Ya vas lyubil. Lyubov' eshche – byt' mozhet’ (‘I loved you. Love still
could exist’), the possibility of love that Pushkin’s elegiac classic keeps alive
is ruled out, and images of horse and wolf introduce the spectre of betrayal
for another lover. While the poem retains the idea of reconciliation that
Pushkin’s poem captures, frequent end-stopped lines create a sense of final-
ity that contributes to a tone quite different in Sosnora’s version:
Я вас любил. Любовь еще – быть может.

Но ей не быть.
Лишь конский топ на эхо нас помножит
да волчья сыть.
Ты кинь коня и волка приласкаешь …

Но ты – не та.
Плывет твой конь к тебе под парусами,
там – пустота.
220 Chapter 4
Взовьется в звон мой волк – с клыками мячик

к тебе, но ты
уходишь в дебри девочек и мачех
моей мечты.
Труднее жить, моя, бороться – проще,

я не борюсь.
Ударит колокол грозы, пророчеств, –
я не боюсь
ни смерти, ни твоей бессмертной славы, –

звезду возжечь!
Хоть коне-волк у смертницы-заставы,
хоть – в ад возлечь!
Проклятий – нет, и нежность – не поможет, –

Я кровь ковал!
Я – вас любил. Любовь – еще быть может …
Не вас, не к вам.
I loved you. Love still could exist./ But it is not to be./ Only the echo of horses’ hooves
will amplify us,/ or food for wolves.// You reject the horse and pet the wolf …/ But
you are not that one./ Your horse drifts towards you under sail,/ there is emptiness.//
At the chimes my wolf rises – in his fangs brings a ball/ to you, but you/ walk off
into the debris of girls and stepmothers/ of my dream.// It is harder to live, my dear,
it is easier to struggle,/ I am not struggling./ The bell strikes a threat, a prophesy,/
I’m not afraid// of death or of your immortal fame, –/ though you set alight a star!/
Even if a horse-wolf is at the she-death’s door,/ even if I lie in hell!// There are no
curses, and tenderness will not help, –/ I have forged my blood!/ I loved you. Love
may still exist …/ Not yours, not for you.
The metre of the poem, and indeed its weighty, prophesying tone echo
the opening poem of Blok’s cycle ‘Na pole Kulikovom’ (On the field of
Kulikovo). The lyric voice has moved away from the emotional tone of
earlier poems: here, there is a sense of his resolve and self-discipline as he
sets out his course and defines his relationship to his former lover.
Viktor Sosnora 221
The variation on Lermontov’s poem is also bleaker than the original.

Lermontov’s sense of a spiritual presence and search for calm and peace
has gone, replaced with the absences of an interlocutor, of God, and of any
sense of purpose or future:
Выхожу один я. Нет дороги.

Там – туман. Бессмертье не блестит.
Ночь, как ночь, – пустыня. Бред без Бога.
Ничего не чудится – Без Ты.
I walk out alone. There is no road. There is fog. No sparkle of immortality. A night like
any other, – a desert. Ravings with no God. No sign of anything – lacking you.
The language in this poem varies wildly in its register. The opening, taken
from Lermontov, begins the poem in a literary mode, yet the statement ‘Net
dorogi’ (There is no road) that replaces Lermontov’s ‘na dorogu’ (on to the
road) immediately undermines this sense of the literary original. Very short
sentences follow, and introduce markedly colloquial phrases. Three times
in the poem the ungrammatical phrase ‘Bez Ty’ (Without You) appears,
which draws our attention to the ‘Ty’. It is capitalised, so it seems to refer
to God, but it is not declined. This awkward phrase seems to express an
inability to comprehend absence, since the unexpected nominative case
seems to insist on presence and vividness, even though it should be negated.
The colloquial language, combined with this grammatical ‘error’, suggests
that the poem deliberately rejects the elevated tone of the original, seeking
instead to evoke the sense of a flat, empty, and meaningless position.
In the poems written after Pushkin, Lermontov, Mayakovsky, Tsvetaeva,
and others, Sosnora self-consciously experiments with different voices and
emotional responses to his subject. Borrowings from and the influence of
other poets do not render his work simply derivative, however; he actively
engages with the position and expression of these other poets. Although in
some respects the collection appears to be a sustained exploration of emotional
territory, these pastiches also constitute an exploration of the lyric position,
using other poems in the same way that the earlier Temy explored narrative
poems and Romanticism. There is a sustained focus on the lyric self that earlier
222 Chapter 4
works either have not taken as a subject, or, in the case of some of the earlier
long, hermetic and surreal poems, have not successfully achieved.
The collection Tridtsat' sem' also features a number of poems that
dramatise internal monologues. The shifts in tone and voice that create
the sense of inner conflict or confusion, and which are characteristic of
Sosnora’s earlier work, are often prevalent. ‘Bessonnitsa’ (‘Insomnia’), which
echoes Pushkin’s 1830 poem ‘Mne ne spit'sya, net ognya’ (‘Sleep does not
come, there is no light’), describes a dreamlike vision in which the persona
is plagued with rats that metamorphose into other shapes, crawling all over
him. It is strikingly like a nightmare, yet the title ‘Insomnia’ suggests that
this torment represents the torture of not being able to sleep, when being
awake takes on the horrors of a bad dream and the escape to the oblivion
of death or sleep are longed for:
Бессонница
Лестница, а по – крысы бегают,

в шляпах, в ботфортах, с рапирами – ура!
Бьется, бьется бабочка – бессонница
в ласках-волосах моих, а волосы болят.
Тело у меня еще теплое,

все в слезах пота, и живот чуть живой.
По животу с блестящими глазенками
крысы, маленькие, как муравьи.
Тьма. Во тьме – евангельской? египетской? –

ты – с телом крысы, майским, меховым.
Лебедь-шея – это евангелия,
бог-башка – это Египет.
Не люби. Но не целуйся с крысами.

Господи, бегут с клыками! кусать!
Где выключатель? Вот! Включается!
Ищу под одеялами – и нет там меня!
Viktor Sosnora 223
Нет нигде меня – на корточках по комнате

ползаю! Лягу – сплю, сплю, сплю …
Раскрою глаза – влюбленно улыбается
в глаза мне крыса, морда как медведь!
Спаси, не люби. Любить – навязывать.

Спасать – явиться лишь и глаза мои закрыть.
О, если б кто-то – вы, что ли, – выстрелил,
но сзади, в затылок, чтоб не ждать, не знать!
Insomnia
The staircase and along – rats are running, in hats, in jack boots, with rapiers – hurrah!
A butterfly beats, beats its wings – insomnia in my hair-caresses, but the hair hurts. My
body is still warm, all in tears of sweat and stomach hardly alive. Across my stomach,
with beady little eyes come the rats, little ones, like ants. Darkness. In the – gospel?
Egyptian? – dark, there’s you with the May, furry body of a rat. A swan-neck – this is
the gospels, a god-pate – this is Egypt. Don’t love. But don’t kiss the rats. God, they are
running with fangs! to bite! Where’s the light switch? There! It’s coming on! I search
under the duvet, and I’m not there! I am nowhere – crouching in the room I crawl!
I lie down – sleep sleep sleep … I open my eyes – a rat lovingly smiles into my eyes,
its face like a bear! Help, don’t love. To love is to be a nuisance. To help is to make an
appearance only to close my eyes. Oh, if only someone – you, maybe, would shoot
me, but from behind, in the back of the head, so there’s no waiting, no knowing.
There is a sense of the mind racing in a state of panic and confusion: the
speaker hardly knows if he is asleep or awake, he seems feverish and is hal-
lucinating. The rats may have been inspired by Pushkin’s mice, but they
belong to the colourful and fabulous animal characters that are part of the
fantastic world of Sosnora’s poems. While these creatures are disturbing,
like other creatures in his work, with their nightmarish shape-shifting
images and unnatural behaviour, they also have the prosaic association of
vermin that live in squalid and impoverished lodgings. This combination
of ordinary, base reality and fantasy conveys both the distortion of the
speaker’s perception and the impoverishment of his life.
The shifting imagery in ‘Bessonitsa’ effectively evokes a dreamlike
scenario; in other poems, too, swift trains of thought that jump from one
224 Chapter 4
subject to another create the impression if not of dreams, then of a con-

sciousness flooded with thoughts, images, memories and ideas and merge
to create an overall mood. Sosnora has spoken about how he believes that
poetry should not be declamatory, should create atmosphere and impres-
sions rather than be declarative:
The weakest of Pushkin’s poems is ‘The Prophet’. Because it is de-cla-ra-tory. Because
there is a theme. But his greatest poem is ‘Demons’, where there is no theme, only
‘… the clouds race, the clouds whirl …’ . Pure mysticism!13
He himself has, of course, made arguments and declarative statements in

his work, but it is true to say that his poems are not concerned purely with
ideas and often do not establish a lyric position or develop a theme. In the
collections Tridtsat' sem' and Deva-ryba, there is more emphasis precisely
on the creation of mood, tone, and atmosphere.
At the end of Tridtsat' sem', Sosnora claims to have come to the end
of the subject of the affair. The final poem ‘Zavershenie’ (‘Conclusion’)
draws the subject to a close:
Ты, мой соратник! По буквам тебя любил.

Кровь отливал в колокола текста.
Книге – конец. И тебя уже убил,
хоть еще ходит где-то имя твое и тело.
You, my brother-in-arms! I loved you in letters./ I spilled blood into the bells of the
text./ The book has come to an end. And I’ve already killed you,/ though your name
and your body still wander somewhere.
Yet the following year, 1974, he wrote the collection Deva-ryba that appar-
ently continues many of the themes of the previous year. In many cases, the
addressee appears still to be Sosnora’s former lover, and the poems are still
concerned with the subject of the relationship; now, however, they dwell
13 ‘Poslednii vsadnik glagola. Interv'yu s Viktorom Sosnoroi v ‘Literaturnoi gazete

15.01.92, No. 3, s. 5’ accessed at Ruthenia <http://www.ruthenia.ru/60s/sosnora/
literaturka-92.htm> 13 August 2009.
Viktor Sosnora 225
more on the poet’s state after its break-up. There are fewer specific refer-
ences to the summer holiday and betrayal that featured in Tridtsat' sem'.
The landscape of the subject, as it were, has changed.
The poems of Deva-ryba continue to demonstrate Sosnora’s mastery
of sound: alliteration carries the movement of the poems from line to
line, and the terse, immediate style compounds a sense of intensity and
immediacy. He is writing at the height of his powers here: lessons from the
language of futurism combine with the lyric fluency of nineteenth- and
twentieth-century masters. He has abandoned the more obvious attempts
at social commentary, and relies on language to create mood and tone. In
‘Slova slaby’ (‘Words are weak’), alliterative staccato lines convey a mood
of resignation, finality, and acceptance. The poem expresses weariness and
emotion not just through the words that are ‘weak’, but through their
sounds and organisation in the poem:
Слова слабы.
А жизнь – желанье.
Овал судьбы –
Жидом журнальным.
Ликуй, ошейник!
Правша, левша ли …
Жизнь? Лишь лишений
бы не лишали.
Хоть бы лишений
не лишали.
Нам нет леченья,
но бьют лежачих.
Но бьют. Но, Брат,

будь бодр, как не был.
Мы бьем в набат
глаголов гнева!
226 Chapter 4
Пусть глас наш глух,

зеницы – пленки,
мы вникем в слух
сквозь перепонки.
Так неживой
признался честно:
– Все ничего.
Все так чудесно.
И просто так
готов рыдать я
от пустяка –
рукопожатья.
Words are weak./ But life is desire./ The oval of fate/ is a newspaper Jew.// Triumph,
collar!/ A left-hander or right-hander …/ Life? Only don’t deprive us of depriva-
tion.// Just don’t deprive us of deprivation./ We have no cure,/ but they beat the
ones that are down.// But they beat. But Brother,/ be bold, as never before./ We’ll
sound the alarm/ of words of anger!// Though our voice is mute,/ our pupils films,/
we’ll hear/ through membranes.// One who was not living/ admitted honestly:/ ‘It’s
all nothing./ It’s all so wonderful.’// And just like that/ I am ready to weep/ at the
slightest thing/ – a handshake.
With its elliptical, economical phrasing and accompanying direct style,

frequent exclamations, and bold statements, this poem recalls the work
of Tsvetaeva. Despite its economy with words, it moves through different
moods: from resignation and cynicism, to inspiration for resistance, and
lastly to recognition of his emotional, strained and nervous state. The switch
from an antagonistic, rebellious voice to a more tender and vulnerable one
is also reminiscent of Tsvetaeva’s poems which often abruptly soften in tone
at their close. Sosnora’s affinity with Tsvetaeva that can be seen here points
not only to his direct indebtedness to her work, but also perhaps to their
common heritage of traditional folk and children’s poems that feature bold
rhythms and alliterative language. The poem appears to be quite simple,
yet the precision of its language weaves a dense, complex pattern of sounds
Viktor Sosnora 227
and roots that is the product of the many years over which Sosnora has
developed his use of language and refined his poetic ear.
The mature and established style that Sosnora had reached by the mid-
1970s is characterized by the accomplishments of his language and form,
such as are illustrated by ‘Slova slaby’, and also by the idiosyncratic, surreal,
fantastic, and grotesque vision that has always been present in his work. The
title poem of his collection Deva-ryba, whose images of lovers as fish are
drawn from Osip Mandel'shtam’s ‘Masteritsa vinovatykh vzorov’ (‘Virtuoso
of guilty gazes’), provides an example of the kind of this vision:
Дева-рыба
Идешь, как рыба на хвосте. Пол красный.

Нам комната, но в коммунальных скалах.
Шкаф шоколадный. Секретер в монетах.
Оконце – электрическая нефть.
Я брат твой, рыба, Звери моря – оба.
Ты вся на васильковом одеяле.
Объятья животов и бельма бреда
любовного! … Погаснет лампа нам.
Отчаянье ли? Ревность ли по лимфе

александрийской конницей? … Пастбища
оставим те … Нам – комната, мы – рыбы,
нас – двое. Нам захлебываться тут.
На завтра – труд копыт и крыл Пегаса,
полиция цитат и холод хлеба,
нам – чоканье коленных чашек-здравиц,
шампанские кружочки чешуи!
О, ревом рыбы! Нам хвосты, как в схватке,

и мускулы в узлах, и вопль, и лепет,
нам пальцы – пять и пять на поясницах!
Целую … Отпечатки на сосцах
228 Chapter 4
и пальцев, и ответных поцелуев,

и к жабрам присосавшиеся жабры
лица, и в отворотах междуножий
высасываем языками слизь
зловещую … Узнать – возненавидеть.

Любить – не знать. Мы памятны – все знали:
наитья нет, и нет ни капилляра,
который чьи-то чресла не ласкал,
все волосы всех тел нам не распутать,
бичи бесчестья или зло лобзанья,
а проще – грех не в грех и храм не в храм.
Гул от луны. Проспекты Петербурга.

Уплыть в каналы и легко лакать нам
чужую жизнь, тела чужие, рыба,
блевать под кем попало и на ком.
Так минет труд. Так минет мир. И род мой.
Последний сам, без звука вас, последних
благословляю! … В келье два девиза:
улыбка и змеиные уста.
Virgin-fish
You walk like a fish on its tail. A red floor./ A room for us, but within communal
cliffs./ A chocolate wardrobe. Writing desk covered in coins./ The window is electric
oil./ I am your brother, fish, we are both Creatures of the sea./ You’re all over the
cornflower bedspread./ Armfuls of stomachs and the wall-eyes of loving gibberish!
…/ The lamp will go out for us.// Is it despair? Is it envy racing through your lymph/
like the Alexandrian cavalry?/ We’ll leave these pastures … We have a room, we are
fish,/ we are two, we’ll choke here./ For tomorrow there is the labour of hooves
and Pegasus’s wings,/ the police of quotations and the cold of bread,/ for us there
is the chinking of knee-cap-toasts,/ champagne flakes of scales!// Oh roar of fish!
Our tails, as though in a fight,/ our muscles in knots, and a scream and babble,/ our
fingers five and five on loins!/ I kiss … Imprints of fingers and reciprocal kisses on
nipples,/ and gills sticking to gills/ of the face, and in the openings between legs/
our tongues suck out evil// slime … To find out is to hate./ To love is not to know.
Viktor Sosnora 229
We are memorable – we always knew:/ that there’s no intuition and no capillary/

that has not caressed someone’s loins,/ we cannot disentangle all the hair of all the
bodies,/ the scourge of dishonour or evil of kisses,/ more simply – a sin is not a sin
and a temple not a temple.// The hum of the moon. Avenues of Petersburg./ It’s easy
to swim off in the canals, lap up/ another’s life, others’ bodies, fish,/ to vomit beneath
whoever’s near and on anybody./ Thus passes work. Thus passes the world. And my
kin./ I am the last, without a sound I bless you, the last ones! … In a monastic cell
there are two devices:/ a smile and a snake’s mouth.
The poem is remarkable for its graphic, physiological depiction of sex:

while Brodsky has been cited as the first to introduce such subject matter
to Russian poetry, Sosnora also made this innovation in the 1970s, as this
poem shows. The poem describes a sexual encounter between the speaker
and a girl, the ‘virgin-fish’, which seems to take place in a communal apart-
ment in Leningrad. Its raw, unromanticised view of the sexual act conveys a
harsh sense of reality more broadly: there is no emotion, niceties, or senti-
ment between the two characters, nor in the broader world view that the
poem expresses. Sosnora has developed the imagery from Mandel'shtam’s
poem, but created a harsher and more grotesque vision.
The ‘fish-people’ of the poem are reminiscent of other animal and
mythical characters in Sosnora’s poems. As well as being labelled ‘fish’,
elements of their physical descriptions are suggestive of fishiness: slimy
mucus, a kiss between gills pressed together, and physical awkwardness,
presumably of a fish out of water. The opening image of the girl walking
like a fish on its tail suggests perhaps her difficulty in managing high heels,
or at least an acute self-consciousness that is expressed in her movements.
Fish imagery also serves to dehumanise the characters, of course, and con-
tributes to the sense of an objective and cold description of these figures.
One might also suggest that as fish, ‘creatures of the sea’, the sense of the
world in which these characters live is separate and somehow remote or
cut off. The room they inhabit is found within the cliffs of a communal
apartment, apparently part of the underworld of the sea or the canals of the
city. They are brought together by their sharing this world: the persona is
the girl’s ‘brother’ because he and she both belong to this habitat and share
the same everyday life. With the fish characters and their shared world,
Sosnora creates the sense of a particular section of society: apparently the
230 Chapter 4
unique environment of a communal flat within Soviet society, shared by a

small group of people. They share an everyday life, described in the second
stanza as characterised by censorship, work, and coldness, and they come
together perhaps for comfort, perhaps out of convenience.
The poem dispenses with romantic love not only in its physiological
description of sex, but also in its scathing attack on romance and love. The
enjambment between stanzas three and four tips the tone of the poem
when the adjective ‘sinister’ describes the slime sucked from orifices. As the
final word in the description of sex here, it introduces a sense of disquiet
and menace to a poem that is already detached and cold, and this lingers
across the suspension points that follow. Stanza four unleashes a barrage
of impersonal infinitive forms and negative statements arguing that love is
deception and the truth is much starker. The patterning of sounds in this
stanza is again impressive: alliteration creates a fabric of consonantal sounds,
and their richness and complexity mirror the entwining and entanglement
described. Bodies with the knowledge of their sexual experiences cannot
recover lost innocence and are forever connected in a web of shared fluids,
touching, and tangled hair. Dense, vituperative statements reject the idea
of love which is placed in opposition to knowledge, while confusion and
compromise erases boundaries to the extent that morality cannot divide
one side from another.
The final stanza of the poem draws back from intensity of the sexual
encounter and subsequent disillusionment. Opening with the sonorous
‘hum of the moon’ and a view of moonlit streets in the city named not
Leningrad but the timeless St Petersburg, we find a vision of the fish swim-
ming in the canals of the city and vicariously lapping at other people’s
lives. It is as though the canals that run through the city are like arteries
taking the fish through the physiology of the city. Again the experience of
others’ lives and interaction with others is physiological – first ingestion
and afterwards vomiting. This interaction, this physical sampling of others’
lives is detached, impersonal, and repetitive. On the one hand, the voice
emerges here as an individual with a lineage, a heritage and identity, but
on the other his detachment from society is compounded by his separation
from society in a monastic cell that only compounds the impression of a
cut-off world where fish-creatures live.
Viktor Sosnora 231
‘Deva-ryba’ illustrates how, by the 1970s, Sosnora’s poetry had become

complex, provocative and challenging. In it, Futurism and ‘classical’ Russian
poetry are fused, and Slavic and Classical folklore and mythology brought
together to create a distinctive style. Specifically, his prioritising of language,
word play, rhythm, sound, and aesthetic effects over content and ideas is
an important divergence from his more celebrated contemporary Brodsky.
Sosnora’s more ‘formalist’ work is highly original and represents an impor-
tant development in Russian poetry that, due to his belated publication in
full, and the fragmented, drawn out reception of his work, has yet to be
fully appreciated both in Russia and abroad.
Chapter 5
Dmitry Bobyshev
Dmitry Bobyshev came from a well-to-do family in Leningrad: his step-

father was a naval engineer, and the family lived in a spacious and elegant flat
on Tauride Street (Tavricheskaia ulitsa). He did reasonably well at school,
and, in 1953, went on to study Chemical Engineering at the Lensoviet
Technological Institute. He does not seem to have had any real enthu-
siasm for his subject. Instead, soon after entering the institute, he began
to develop an interest in poetry, found like-minded friends Evgeny Rein
and Anatoly Naiman, and participated in the readings, poetry competi-
tions, and various LITOs described in chapters one and two. In 1960, he
graduated, married his first wife Natal'ya, and began his first job at a closed
institute where research was carried out into the materials for the H-bomb.
By this time, he had become well known in poetry circles in Leningrad,
and his work was circulating in samizdat. Bobyshev’s work was included
in Aleksandr Ginzburg’s Sintaksis No. 3 (Syntax No. 3), along with some
of his poet-friends Rein, Eremin, Uflyand, and Brodsky. None of the early
poems from Sintaksis are included in Bobyshev’s published collections, nor
were they published officially; the audience of friends and acquaintances
in the poetry circles of Leningrad formed his early readership.
Clearly, the friendships with poets and participation in Leningrad
poetry circles in the early 1960s were important because they nurtured
Bobyshev’s interest in poetry. In 1963, however, he became separated from
much of this world when his close friendship with Rein, Naiman, and
Brodsky broke down. Until that time, the four poets had met often: they
needed each other, Bobyshev says, as listeners and critics of each other’s
poetry. In December of 1963, however, Bobyshev came into conflict with
Brodsky, and the group of four split, never to be reunited. The conflict
occurred over Bobyshev’s affair with Marina Basmanova, which Brodsky
234 Chapter 5
considered a betrayal, and for which he never forgave his former friend. For
Bobyshev, the episode ended in much emotional pain, and the loss of many
friends, since most people, including Evgeny Rein, took Brodsky’s side of
the argument. As a result, Bobyshev’s social circles changed at this time,
and he began to spend time with other writers including Sergey Dovlatov
and Fedor Chirskov. This estrangement from his friends and readers may
have been one reason why his poetry did not develop to the sophistication
and skill of his best work for a long time – until the late 1970s.
Bobyshev left the USSR in 1979. He was given permission to move to
the United States because he married an American woman; before leav-
ing the USSR, he was given a passport and visa for only one visit, but was
assured that at the Soviet consulate in the USA he would be issued with a
multiple-journey visa. When he applied for such a visa in the USA, how-
ever, it was repeatedly refused, and he came to understand that he would
not be able to move freely between the East and West as he had imagined.
He stayed on in the USA, not visiting Russia until the USSR collapsed
in 1991. In immigrating to the USA, Bobyshev followed Brodsky, who
had left the USSR seven years earlier. The rift between the two had never
been healed, however, and this situation did not change in emigration.
Brodsky refused to have any contact or association with Bobyshev, and,
since Brodsky had become such a central figure in Russian literature, this
meant that Bobyshev found himself largely excluded from the circles of
émigré literature and Slavic studies: from conferences, publications, and
publicity. From 1979 to 1985 he lived in Milwaukee where he worked as an
engineer; in 1985 he found an academic job teaching Russian literature at
Urbana-Champaign, where he continues to live as of 2009. The legacy of
his argument with Brodsky in 1963 continues to distort the reception of
his work profoundly both in the West and in Russia. It is hoped that his
inclusion here will go some way to redressing this imbalance.
Bobyshev has described how he believes emigration to be a unique
experience, and ‘an interesting adventure for the rest of your life’. More
specifically, he has explained that in emigration he was able to think more
clearly and fully than he ever was in Soviet Russia: ‘When I lived there, it
seemed to me that I could think with only one half of my consciousness,
or one hemisphere. I tried to look at myself and life there from the outside,
Dmitry Bobyshev 235
but I couldn’t, I had no point of reference. Here, it is possible to think with

your whole consciousness, or with both cerebral hemispheres, by taking
into account life experience both here and there.’1 Even though he had no
larger audience for his work in America than he had had in Leningrad, his
poetry seems to have benefited enormously from this change in his life;
since leaving Russia, he has become a major poet of his generation. While
his early work is characterised by a deliberate, premeditated and balanced
tone, later his language becomes more dynamic, energetic, and destabilis-
ing, incorporating Futurist-inspired word-play and sound patterning, and
drawing on the richness of Russian eighteenth century poetry. The scale,
imagination, language, and technique of his work grow significantly more
sophisticated, bold, and innovative.
Visions in the World
Bobyshev’s earliest poems date from the beginning of the 1960s, but for the
most part his work was not published until much later in his career. The
subject matter, style, and language of much of his work precluded official
publication in the USSR, and therefore very little appeared in the Soviet
press. He was first published in the Moscow journal Yunost' (Youth) in 1964,
when he was twenty-eight years old; his work did not appear in print again
until 1967, when one poem ‘Vozmozhnosti’ (‘Possibilities’) was included
in the Leningrad almanac Den' poezii, and in 1970 his work was published
in the USSR for the third and final time in the journal Avrora. Like his
fellow poets Rein, Brodsky, and Naiman, and along with many other young
Leningrad poets, his unpublished work reached an audience through public
and semi-public readings and samizdat, but this audience was limited in its
numbers. When, from 1975 onwards, it became more common for unofficial
1 Dmitry Bobyshev, ‘Laboratoriya svobody (Vystuplenie na Moskovskom poeticheskom

biennale-2003), Voprosy literatury 5 (2004), 258–64 (p. 259).
236 Chapter 5
Russian writers to publish their work abroad, Bobyshev’s work began to

appear in the émigré press, and in 1979, when he was 43 years old, his first
proper collection, Ziyaniya (Gapings) appeared in Paris. The collection
includes poems written mostly over the decade 1962–72, arranged into
sections, as well as some long poems dating mostly from the 1970s.
The early poems are perhaps best described as meditative: they do
not move from a premise to an argument and conclusion. Instead, they
explore a subject by approaching it from different angles, presenting vari-
ous ways of understanding it. We see this in a poem written in 1964 that
describes a bridge over the Griboedov Canal in St Petersburg adorned
with winged lions:
Евгению Рейну
Крылатый лев сидит с крылатым львом

и смотрит на крылатых львов, сидящих
в такой же точно позе на другом
конце моста и на него глядящих
такими же глазами.
Львиный мост.
Любой из них другого, а не мост

удерживает третью существа,
а на две трети сам уже собрался,
и, может быть, сейчас у края рва
он это отживающее братство
покинет.
Но попарно изо рта

железо напряженного прута
у каждого из них в цепную нить
настолько натянуло звенья,
что, кажется, уже не расцепить
скрепившиеся память и забвенье,
Dmitry Bobyshev 237
порыв и неподвижность,
верх и низ,
не разорвав чугунный организм
противоборцев.
Только нежный сор

по воздуху несет какой-то вздор.
И эта подворотенная муть,

не в силах замутить оригинала,
желая за поверхность занырнуть,
подергивает зеркало канала
нечистым отражением.
Над рвом
крылатый лев сидит с крылатым львом
и смотрит на крылатых львов напротив:
в их неподвижно-гневном развороте,
возможно, даже ненависть любя,
он видит повторенного себя.
To Evgeny Rein
A winged lion sits with a winged lion/ and looks at the winged lions that are sitting/
in exactly the same pose on the other/ end of the bridge and looking at him/ with
exactly the same eyes.// The bridge of lions.// Each of them holds the other, not
the bridge/ with a third of its being,/ but the other two thirds he has gathered up/
and, perhaps now from this obsolete brotherhood/ he can escape.// But out from
their mouths in pairs/ the iron of a tensed bar/ that each one holds has made into a
cord-like chain/ the links, they are stretched so tightly,/ that it seems you will never
loosen/ the memory and forgetfulness braced together,/ the motion and immobility,/
the top and bottom,/ without tearing apart the iron organism/ of the opponents.//
Only tender rubbish/ carries some kind of nonsense through the air.// And these
dregs from under a gate,/ are not enough to muddy the original,/ they wish to dive
beyond the surface,/ to distort the reflection of the mirror of the canal/ with an
unclean reflection.// Above the ditch/ a winged lion sits with a winged lion/ and
looks at the winged lions opposite:/ in their frozen angry pose,/ it’s possible, in loving
hatred,/ that he sees a copy of himself.
238 Chapter 5
With its measured and balanced form, this poem captures the tension of
the frozen tableau. The sense of suspension is heightened by the lions being
identical: the arrested dynamism of the one is mirrored in its opposite coun-
terpart. Bobyshev uses repetition, and even the arrangement of words in
something like a mirror image to convey the sense of the tableau. He also
uses enjambment to great effect in this poem: by breaking sentences in the
middle of syntactic units, he creates a sense that the movement of the lan-
guage, like the movement of the lions, is arrested; lines which are split into
two parts mirror the separation of the two lions by the bridge between them.
The careful, thorough description is a characteristic of Bobyshev’s work, as
is the restrained, reflective tone that emerges from these prose-like lines.
In the fourth section of the poem, the lions’ opposition and tension
becomes a metaphor for the force that separates and yet binds together
opposite values and properties: memory and oblivion, sudden movement
and stasis, movement upwards and downwards, and finally, in the last sec-
tion, love and hate. These pairs cannot be separated without destroying
the whole ‘organism’, the entire structure of the bridge of which they are a
part: each element balances another and must exist in combination with its
counterparts. Only in their reflection in the water below can the attitudes
of the lions that enshrine these oppositions be disrupted: rubbish floating
over the water has the power to obfuscate the images of the lions, but the
originals on the bridge cannot be so easily distorted or disrupted. Thus, in this
ornamental bridge, Bobyshev captures the sense of some wider truth about
permanence in the world that exists beyond the mutable surface of things.
This movement within a poem is typical of Bobyshev’s work: medita-
tive reflection on details of the real, tangible, and material world around him
leads to a sense of meaning and significance on a higher level. The poem’s
insight is reached through contemplation, and the tone is restrained and
considered. It uncovers levels of meaning in the material world around us
that are not revealed to a casual observer. In this, Bobyshev’s poetry recalls
Mandel'shtam’s poems on architecture that uncover layers of meaning in
the structures and histories of buildings, and in general the Acmeist focus
on the concrete world around us. In poems that describe elements of the
neoclassical city of St Petersburg/Leningrad, with its waterways and facades,
it is not difficult to see that Bobyshev is consciously continuing the tradition
Dmitry Bobyshev 239
of poems written about the city of St Petersburg. He writes about a tram

ride in the frost in ‘Vidy’ (‘Visions’), the sounds heard on the streets of
the city in ‘Popytka tishiny’ (‘An attempt at quiet’), a contemporary city
scene in ‘Golubka’ (‘Dear’), and one of the city boiler rooms in ‘Do chego
zhe ona nekazistaya’ (‘How dowdy it is’).
In fact, however, beyond the cycle ‘Vidy 11’ (‘Visions 11’) to which
these Petersburg works belong, few poems take the city of St Petersburg
as their subject. In the cycle ‘Vidy 1’, we find, on the contrary, images of
rural and old-fashioned Northern Russia, with its villages, landscapes, and
traditions. These images are still drawn from everyday life, landscape, and
experience, but they are coloured with an archaic hue that harks back to a
peasant, wooden Russia of the distant past, often through the use of lan-
guage stylised with archaic vocabulary and forms, and Biblical references. In
‘Nizkoe mesto’ (‘A lowland place’) (1967), for example, a brushwood road
that crosses a bog conjures for the poet images of its long-dead builder, of a
pilgrim’s journey to a chapel, and of prayers of thankfulness. The landscape,
simplicity, and religious sensibility of the poem are striking:
Низкое место
Не пройти б тебе через болото,

если б не случилась эта гать –
чья-то полусгнившая работа
плотника дорожного, кого-то,
кто под треугольником кивота
сам уже истлел, но вот смотри-ка –
помогает путнику шагать.
А, видать, старался горемыка –

плотно мастерилась эта гать,
чтобы за неделю смог калика
до часовни, что была – владыка,
а теперь – с травой равновелика,
пред глаза давно слепого лика
и домой за праздник дошагать.
240 Chapter 5
А переберешься через гать

и дойдешь до местности лесистой
мимо развалюхи неказистой
до постройки истовой и чистой –
около нее подольше выстой
перед тем, как дальше зашагать, –
и тогда в компании артельной
помяни молитвой самодельной
в волости безлюдной, многоельной
эту пригодившуюся гать.
A lowland place
You would not make it across this marsh,/ if this brushwood road had not been here
–/ somebody’s work half rotted away/ a road carpenter, someone/ who beneath the
triangle of a wooden box/ has rotted away himself, but have a look –/ he helps the
traveller make his steps.// And obviously the poor devil worked hard –/ he crafted
this brushwood road very solidly,/ so that in a week a pilgrim might/ reach the chapel
that once reigned here,/ but now is level with the grass,/ come before the eyes of a
face long blind,/ and walk back home after the holiday.// And you will make your
way along the brushwood road/ and reach a wooded place/ past a ruin that is noth-
ing to look at/ to a clean and devout building –/ tarry beside it for a little while/
before you walk on further, –/ and then in your company of workers/ say a prayer of
your own making/ in this uninhabited, district of many fir trees/ to this brushwood
road that came to your aid.
The brushwood road is symbolic of ‘wooden Russia’ that was scattered

with rural churches and characterised by religious devotion. The road has
outlived the church and the culture surrounding it, but it remains as a marker
of the earlier culture to which it belonged. It becomes the starting point
for Bobyshev’s imagining of that Russia, and specifically his reconstruc-
tion of an image of the pilgrim’s journey. As the poem progresses, repeated
rhymes contribute to a sense that the vision of this lost world is growing in
strength and intensity; the use of archaic words such as ‘goremyka’ (poor
devil), ‘kalika’ (pilgrim), ‘gat'’ (brushwood road), and ‘lik’ (face) reinforce
this impression. Like an archaeologist or historian, the speaker identifies
evidence of an earlier culture. In the same way that contemplation of the
Dmitry Bobyshev 241
lions adorning the Leningrad bridge led the poet from the everyday world
to abstract ideas, here the contemplation of a dilapidated brushwood road
transports him to a sense of history and Russian heritage. Again, the poem’s
expression is restrained: the even metre and many run-on lines slow its pace
and create a contemplative tone.
This cycle is imbued with a sense of history and of old, religious Russia.
It evokes a time all but lost, discernible only in small surviving details such
as an old photograph, the brushwood road, or the landscape and climate
of the Russian north. In the poet’s imagining, this is a world in which
people, objects, and actions carry symbolic meaning. Archaic and religious
vocabulary creates a stylized language that evokes Old Russia, the Old
Church Slavonic liturgy, and traditions of Russia Orthodoxy. Bobyshev
uses such stylized language in poems which are not about the past as well,
and it reinforces their meditative quality and search for symbolism and
meaning in the everyday, modern world. In ‘Vidy 11’ (1969), for example,
the poet sees religious visions as he passes through the wintry streets of the
contemporary city of Leningrad. In the opening stanza, he finds beauty,
even holiness, in the stairwells and streets of the city:
Не декабрь, а канделябр-месяц:
светятся окурки в глуби лестниц,
светятся глаза иных прелестниц,
зрят из-под зазубренных ресниц;
светят свято купола Николы,
охлаждая жар, и окна школы
отбивают явно ямб тяжелый
и зеленый блеск наружных ламп.
Not December, but candelabrum-month:/ cigarette butts shine in the depths of stair-
wells,/ eyes of other beauties shine,/ looking out from under serrated eyelashes;/ the
cupolas of St Nicholas’s shine holily,/ cooling the heat, and the windows of a school/
clearly beat out a heavy iamb/ and the green glint of outside lights.
From the opening image of the candelabrum to the green light of out-
door lamps, the stanza is imbued with light. The candelabrum establishes
an image of refinement, of light that might adorn an elegant residence, if
242 Chapter 5
not a church; when in line two we encounter the image of cigarette butts
glowing in stairwells, the light they share in common with the candelabrum
suggests that this prosaic image also shares something of the beauty of the
candles. The root ‘svet’ (light) is found again in line 3 where it is associ-
ated with beautiful eyes, and in line 5 in the form ‘svetyat’ (are glowing)
and ‘svyato’ (holily), making the connection between light and holiness
explicit. In addition, he uses the Slavonicism ‘zryat’ (see) in line 4 here,
which adds to the religious and archaic sense of the stanza, and connects
with the image of the church cupolas, leading the reader towards a more
symbolic and religious interpretation of the images. The extensive rhyming
again points to careful construction, considered subject, and polished form,
and the attention to the roots of the language is used to develop ideas.
These early poems describe the discovery of symbolic meaning and
significance in everyday objects, places, and experience, and this close obser-
vation of the world perhaps owes a debt to Acmeism. But the natural world,
too, is an important source of inspiration where the poet discovers spir-
itual values; Bobyshev’s descriptions of nature echo the mystical tradition
in Russian poetry found, for example, in the work of Tyutchev and later
the symbolists. His epigraphs from Tyutchev and Bryusov among others
underline his affinity with them.
The 1965 cycle of poems ‘Vsya v pyatnakh’ (‘Everything in patches’)
opens with an epigraph from Tyutchev ‘Ne to, chto mnite vy, priroda …’
(‘Nature is not what you think it is …’). This quote succinctly introduces
Bobyshev’s vision of nature in this and other poems as a series of ciphers or
symbols hiding meaning and significance. Similes, metaphors, and atten-
tion to detail create immediate descriptions: the reader is left with a direct,
striking image like an imprint or snapshot. In section 3, for example, we
find the picture of a meadow and a swarm of bees above it:
3. Взгляд
Запятнанный теплом и светом,

луг загудел тенистым,
зазвенел нагретым
медовым золотым пятном;
Dmitry Bobyshev 243
и навзничь в небеса срываясь, пчелы

летят, на миг увидев кверху дном
мир подгулявший в час его веселый,
и этот вид уносят густосёлы,
как взяток, в дом.
3. A Glance
Speckled with warmth and light,/ the meadow hummed with a shady,/ rang with a
warmed/ honey gold patch;/ and soaring straight into the skies, bees/ fly, seeing for
a moment upside down/ the tipsy world at its merry hour,/ and the dense-dwellers
take this view,/ like their foraged nectar, back home.
The accumulation of adjectives, overflowing in run-on lines, suggests the

overwhelmingly sensory experience of the scene, and emphasises its inten-
sity. The language is highly alliterative, and its density culminates in the
neologism ‘gustosely’ (‘dense-dwellers’), a creation which seems to be a
response to the effusion and richness of the scene. The novelty of this word
also mirrors the poem’s idea that, when the bees fly through the scene, they
gather not only nectar and pollen, but also a new and unusual view of their
surroundings. It is a playful image, and points to the discovery of delight
and inspiration in the natural world.
Further arresting images and similes combine with the sounds of words
and rhythms of lines in the poem ‘Volny pervye’ (‘Waves for the first time’)
and the cycle ‘Volny’ (‘Waves’). Both works describe the waves of the sea,
seeing in their movement the creative and destructive forces of nature. In
‘Volny pervye’, the speaker envisages the waves entreating the shore with
questions and begging for answers; they seem to be trying to escape the
darkness and chaos of the sea that oppresses them:
Им души раздавливал в жмых

заживший подобьями хаос,
и тьма шевелений живых
всё шла, колыхаясь.
244 Chapter 5
О берег – с потягами лап!

Хребтом, – как по обуху плетью.
Расхристанно клянчила хлябь
ответов у тверди.
И дикую сладкую блажь,

валяясь развратным диваном,
стовёрстый вынеживал пляж,
окатанный валом.
Their souls were pressed into a flat cake by/ chaos that’s come to life through its own
likenesses,/ and the darkness of living movement/ still went on, rolling.// On to the
shore, with clawing paws!/ With a ridge, like a whip to the spine./ The abyss desper-
ately begged/ for answers from dry land.// And a wild, sweet bliss,/ was kneaded by
the hundred-mile beach/ sprawling like a debauched divan,/ rolled by a wave.
Each stanza begins with a strong statement or exclamation and then ebbs
away in a shorter final line: this form mirrors the action of the sea and draws
a close connection between the rhythm of the waves and the processes of
thought and imagination.
The conflict between the abyss and chaos of the sea and the solid yet
indifferent dry land is also portrayed in the long cycle ‘Volny’, written
1970–1. The first poem opens with a question about the essence of the
waves and their motion:
Кто живуший у волн не знавал,

как идет приобщение вещи
к ритму? Как начинается вал?
Is there anyone who has lived by the waves and not discovered,/ how a thing is drawn/
towards rhythm? How a wave begins?
The cycle is concerned with questions about our position as creative beings
in the world and discovers depths not only of the sea but also of sight;
across the poem, insight into a secret of creation gradually unfolds. ‘Volny’
is more complex and obscure than many of the earlier and shorter poems
Dmitry Bobyshev 245
of the 1960s, yet it shares with them a prioritising of vision. Although its
descriptions are more involved and detailed than those of ‘Nizkoe mesto’
and ‘Vsya v pyatnakh’, the impulse to discover hidden significance, truths,
and meaning in the material world around him is essentially the same.
‘Volny’ is perhaps more explicit in its search for enlightenment, and in
this it anticipates the more abstract and more Christian poems of the
early 1970s.
In 1972, Bobyshev underwent a religious awakening that prompted him
to convert to Christianity and to write poems on more explicitly religious
subjects.2 At first after this experience, his poems tended towards mysti-
cism and were highly symbolic: the first response to his new perception
of the world was ‘Veshchestvennaya komediya’ (‘The material comedy’),
written 1972–3, which attempts to combine his scientific training with
religious ideas. It is ambitious, echoing Dante’s Divine Comedy but offering
a material version of Dante’s journey, in which the poet travels not to the
underworld, but through the substance of the earth. The path downwards
will lead, he explains, ‘through zero’, into the depths of the material world
in order to describe a higher plane of spiritual meaning. The motif of the
journey and the search for enlightenment are taken from Dante’s work, but
the central concern of the poem is very different from the Italian model
and finds a closer analogy in another text referred to several times in the
poem, the legend of Pygmalion. Bobyshev is concerned with the nature of
human beings as ‘created’ and material beings, and yet also as creators in
their own right. Like the waves in ‘Volny’, they are both created and crea-
tive, existing in a natural rhythm.
‘Veshchestvennaya komediya’ is longer than previous works, and
uses a wide range of metres across its sections. The rhymes are particu-
larly impressive: unlike Bobyshev’s earlier work, in which rhymes were
often grammatical, here they are often innovative and not grammatical.
They also play an important role in the ordering of the stanzas in most
2 Dmitry Bobyshev, ‘Chelovekotekst. Iz knigi memuarov’ Novyi Zhurnal no. 247

(2007), available at <http://magazines.russ.ru/nj/2007/246/bo6.html>, accessed
9 October 2008. See also Dmitry Bobyshev, Avtoportret v litsakh, pp. 122–7.
246 Chapter 5
sections. While the conception of the poem is bold and ambitious, how-
ever, its execution is at times frustrating: the mysticism is opaque, and
at times the reader’s understanding of a section is necessarily intuitive.
It jumps between images and ideas suddenly and frequently, and these
transitions seem at times to be too many and too varied to make sense of
the leaps of imagination and thinking that they represent. Nevertheless,
this and other longer poems written at about this time are evidence that
at this stage in his career Bobyshev also began to experiment with longer
and more ambitious works; in time, and especially after emigration, this
experimentation came to fruition and he successfully manages longer, more
involved poems and cycles that move well beyond the early restrained and
meditative lyrics.
In Dialogue with Russian Poetry
As Bobyshev began to write longer forms, using more varied imagery and
contrasting registers of language, he moved away from the lyric style that
was in keeping with the Petersburg tradition and from the influence of
Tyutchev discernible in his nature poems. As we shall see, later influences
broadened and developed his work. His relationship with Russian poetry
is reflected not only in his poetics, however; dialogues with other poets
forms an important thematic thread in his work, especially during USSR
period. There are many early poems dedicated to young poets whom he
knew through Leningrad poetry circles, and he also wrote about his personal
life and poet friends. The long poem ‘Nebesnoe v zemnom’ (‘Heavenly in
the earthly’), written 1965–70, for example, describes Bobyshev’s affair
with Marina Basmanova which had such calamitous consequences for his
friendship with Brodsky and others.
The most significant and extended poem addressed to and writ-
ten about a Russian poet is the cycle of poems written in memory of
Anna Akhmatova. Bobyshev was introduced to Akhmatova in 1960, and
Dmitry Bobyshev 247
describes her as seeming to him then ‘an anachronism … imbued with

the scent of official disfavour’.3 He met her through Anatoly Naiman,
and in the early 1960s these two poets, together with Brodsky and Rein,
formed a close-knit group of friends and spent a lot of time with her; she
called them her ‘magic choir’ and offered them support and recognition
as poets that the official establishment did not extend to them. In 1966
Anna Akhmatova died, by which time the friends had argued, and this
golden age of the four young poets and their mentor was irretrievably lost.
Bobyshev felt Akhmatova’s loss keenly; even reflecting that he was prac-
tically in love with her during her last years.4 His poem in her memory,
‘Traurnye oktavy’ (‘Funeral octaves’) forms one of the most important
poetic records of this milieu.
‘Traurnye oktavy’ consists of eight octaves arranged in a cycle. The
octaves are essentially a series of meditations, each one giving expression
to the poet’s grief by recalling one memory of Akhmatova. Together they
form a kind of composite, posthumous portrait of the poet, and also a
meditation upon Bobyshev’s own grieving. In the first two octaves, he
listens to a recording of Akhmatova’s voice and is transported back into
his grief; the third and fourth describe Akhmatova’s death; the fifth and
sixth move to her grave and the four ‘orphans’ she left behind; the final
two octaves reflect on her legacy in poetry. A personal, almost confessional
tone distinguishes the cycle from other poems that Bobyshev wrote at the
time: these poems do not seek an abstract meaning in what has happened,
but lament a real loss and express his sense of grief.
The cycle opens not with the figure of Akhmatova herself, but with
her poetry and her voice: a recording of her reading prompts Bobyshev to
reminisce and grieve. The recording recalls her presence, but also empha-
sizes her absence:

4 Ibid., p. 311.
248 Chapter 5
Голос
Забылось, но не всё перемололось:

огромно-голубиный и грудной,
в разлуке с собственной гортанью, голос
от новой муки стонет под иглой.
Не горло, но безжизненная полость
сейчас, теперь вот ловит миг былой.
И звуковой бороздки рвется волос,
но только тень от голоса со мной.
The Voice
Forgotten, but not happy ever after:/ hugely dovelike and chesty,/ now separated
from its own larynx, the voice/ groans from new torment beneath the needle./ Not
the throat, but a lifeless cavity/ now, nowadays captures a moment of the past./ And
the hairline sound groove snaps,/ but there’s only the shadow of a voice with me.
The mechanics of playing the recording suggest to Bobyshev that Akhmatova’s

suffering continues: she groans because she is tormented by the needle of the
record player. The loudspeaker that is amplifying the recording is described
as a ‘lifeless cavity’ that has replaced her lungs: without Akhmatova herself,
her poetry is disembodied and lacklustre. Alliteration of the sound ‘g’ con-
nects the cluster of words related to her voice: ‘golos’ (voice), ‘ogromno’
(huge), ‘golubinii’ (dove-like), ‘grudnoi’ (chesty), ‘gortan'’ (larynx), ‘igloi’
(needle), and ‘gorlo’ (throat). Bobyshev uses assonance, especially of the
vowel ‘o’, together with the internal and end rhymes to create a sonorous
effect that imitates the voice itself. Such complex organization of sound is
found throughout the poem, and belies its apparent simplicity. It is perhaps
one way that Bobyshev plays tribute to Akhmatova as a poet, imitating her
skill and subtle verse in this poem dedicated to her.
The memories of Akhmatova in this poem are distinctly personal:
she is Akhmatova as Bobyshev knew her, not as a famous Russian poet. By
presenting her in this way, he draws attention to his friendship with her,
but also recovers her as an individual from her more impersonal public
image. Octaves 3 and 4, ‘Portret’ (‘Portrait’) and ‘Vzglyad’ (‘Gaze’) describe
Akhmatova’s appearance; given the extent to which she was painted, drawn
Dmitry Bobyshev 249
and photographed during her life, this is a significant subject. In these two
octaves he focuses particularly on her eyes and their gaze on the world: in
‘Portret’, she is looking forward from the moment of her heart attack into
the freedom of death that lies before her, and this image blends with his
memories of her in her last years. In ‘Vzglyad’, he sees her in her coffin at
her funeral, and again remembers the expression of her eyes. It is striking
that the poems do not describe the conventional images of Akhmatova
that are well known and widely reproduced, but Bobyshev’s memory of
her as he knew her and as he saw her after her death. Similarly personal
is the penultimate poem of the cycle, ‘Vstrecha’ (‘Meeting’), which refers
to the poem ‘Pyataya roza’ (‘The fifth rose’) that Akhmatova dedicated to
Bobyshev; she took her epigraph from one of his poems.
Bobyshev’s memories of Akhmatova’s death were bound up with the
break with his friends that had happened three years previously, in December
1963. When the four former friends attended their mentor’s funeral in 1966,
it was a painful reminder of their former friendship, and in ‘Vse chetvero’
(‘All four’), Bobyshev describes the presence of the four poets who were
once friends – Rein, Bobyshev, Naiman, and Brodsky – at her funeral. In
this octave he coined the now famous name for the four, ‘Akhmatova’s
orphans’; the poem laments not only the loss of their mentor, but also of
their friendship, as irretrievable as the life of their great poet and friend:
Закрыв глаза, я выпил первым яд.

И на кладбищенском кресте гвоздима,
душа прозрела: в череду утрат
заходят Ося, Толя, Женя, Дима
ахматовскими сиротами в ряд.
Лишь прямо, друг на друга не глядят
четыре стихотворца – побратима.
Их дружба, как и жизнь, не обратима.
With closed eyes, I drank poison for the first time./ And nailed to the cross of the
cemetery,/ my soul came of age: in a procession of losses/ come Osya, Tolya, Zhenya,
Dima/ like Akhmatova’s orphans in a row./ They look only straight ahead, not at
each other,/ the four poets, these blood brothers./ Their friendship, like her life,
has gone forever.
250 Chapter 5
By using the diminutives of the four friends’ names, Bobyshev empha-

sises the intimacy of their friendship. He expands the focus here from
Akhmatova alone to the milieu, the time, and the friendships that are
associated with her. The poem becomes a lament for the past, as well as
for the passing of the poet herself.
In keeping with the memories of the funeral and the very personal refer-
ences to his former friends, in the last octave Bobyshev recalls Akhmatova’s
voice in a private not public domain: she is not reading her poetry, but
calling out to Khanna Gorenko, who lived with her in Komarovo during
the summers, announcing the arrival of young visitors:5
СЛОВА
Когда гортань – алтарной частью храма,

тогда слова Святым Дарам сродни.
И даже самое простое «Ханна!
Здесь молодые люди к нам, взгляни …»
встает магически, поет благоуханно.
Всё стихло разом в мартовские дни.
Теперь стихам звучать бы невозбранно,
но без нее немотствуют они.
Words
When the larynx is like the altar of a church,/ then the words are like a Holy Gift./ And
even the simplest ‘Khanna!/ There are some young people here to see us, come and
see …’/ arises magically, sings ambrosially./ Everything went silent in those March days./
Now you’d think the poems would resound freely,/ but without her they are silent.
The simple words he remembers Akhmatova calling out appear magical in

his memory, while her poems, which in the conventional idea of a legacy
should endure and live on beyond a poet’s death, are mute. Again, longer
lines with enjambment that elaborate on memories of her contrast with
short, end-stopped lines that convey finality. In this last section, Bobyshev
5 Ibid., p. 296.
Dmitry Bobyshev 251
introduces the vocabulary of religion and the church that enhances the
poem’s already solemn and reverential tone; by doing so he elevates
Akhmatova’s status and his reverence and love for her beyond the realm
of personal significance to a spiritual level where the archetypes of Christian
love, loss and pain resonate with his own loss and grief.
‘Traurnye oktavy’ looks back on Bobyshev’s friendship with poets in
the 1950s and early 1960s. Two years later, in 1973, he dedicated the poem
‘I zrenie i slukh’ (‘Both vision and hearing’) to a younger poet whom he
got to know at about this time. The twenty-five-year-old Elena Shvarts
belonged to the generation of poets younger than Bobyshev, who did not
benefit from the sponsorship and encouragement of young writers that the
official literary establishment provided to the Thaw generation of poets.
Bobyshev got to know her and her contemporaries in the second half of
the 1960s. The poem addressed to her, which uses the stars as a metaphor
for literary traditions, alludes to the fact that Shvarts was one of the ‘stars’
of the younger generation of Russian poets emerging at that time.
‘I zrenie i slukh’ begins with the poet observing the night sky. His
observation is like an exchange: constellations above trace a pattern on
his retina, and he sends his gaze to the series of beautiful stars. In time,
however, each star he gazes upon disappears, leaving him disappointed,
and, at the end of the third stanza, he turns away from the beauty of the
night sky. At this point, disappointed after losing sight of the beautiful
stars, he casts his gaze to the ground and discovers the reflection of a star
in a shard of ice lying there:
Казалось, я навеки насладил

и зрение, и слух, и дух, и тело,
но колесницу с нею укатил
Возничий вдаль от моего предела …
Тогда я отвернулся от светил.
И вдруг увидел, что крупинкой льдистой

на камушке замерзшая вода
мне отражает самый центр диска.
Небесный центр – на крупинке льда!
252 Chapter 5
И вот уже в глаза мои глядится,

луч преломив, Полярная Звезда.
Так видел Дант мерцанье Парадиза
на самом дне страданья и стыда,
так дважды преломленный луч традиций
упал случайно в этот стих, сюда.
It seemed forever that I delighted/ my vision, my hearing, my spirit, and my body,/
but the chariot carrying her was led away/ by its driver, far from my limit …/ Then I
turned away from the stars.// And suddenly I saw that like an icy pearl/ on a stone,
some frozen water/ reflected to me the very centre of a disc./ The heavens’ centre – on
a shard of ice!/ Staring into my eyes now,/ its rays refracted, was the Pole Star./ Thus
Dante saw a glimmer of Paradise/ on the very bottom of suffering and shame,/ thus
this twice refracted ray of traditions/ has fallen by chance right here, in this line.
As the poem develops it becomes clear that the starts are a metaphor for
literary traditions, and the refraction of their light represents reinterpre-
tations and adaptations of them. It is significant that he sees the light of
the Pole star refracted: this star is also called the North Star, and belongs
in the constellation Ursa Minor, or the Little Bear. It suggests that this is
specifically a vision of hope and light for Russian literature. In the same
way that Dante’s vision of Paradise came to him in the depths of hell, it
comes at a time when the observer had turned away from the beauty of the
heavens, in other words at a time of despair and darkness.
With this vision of hope at the point of despair, Bobyshev suggests
that his poem may be continuing a literary tradition. He is tentative, for
the conditions in Russia that have caused his despair may also prevent
this new refraction of tradition being adopted in Russia, and there is no
certainty about the way ahead:
– Но морехода взор и слух радиста,

ведущие Улиссовы суда,
в Медведицыных ласках возродиться
сумеют ли? Рассеяное «да …»
бормочет мне глухой и ломкий дискант,
да камушком сердечко иногда …
Dmitry Bobyshev 253
But can the vision of the sailor and the hearing of the radio operator,/ who are
leading the vessels of Ulysses,/ be revived in the arms of the she-bear?/ A distant
‘yes …’/ is mumbled to me by a mute and fragile soprano,/ and like a little stone the
heart-shaped sometimes …
Bobyshev wonders if, in the arms of the ‘she-bear’ Russia, great literature
such as written by Homer and Dante can find a new incarnation. The answer
to the question is a scarcely audible yes, the expression of a faint hope: this
poet, who has not been published in Russia because the Soviet authorities
have set about mangling and destroying Russian literature through censor-
ship and oppression, suggests that the young and promising poet, Elena
Shvarts, may restore the Russian tradition.
For the most part, Bobyshev’s references to other Russian poets
point to his affiliation with the tradition of ‘classical’ poetry in Russia;
formally his work is written in this tradition even when he begins, in the
late 1960s and 1970s, to use looser form with varying line lengths and
stanza forms. But a poem written in January 1977 alerts us to what is per-
haps for Bobyshev a new interest in the Futurist, experimental tradition in
Russian poetry. ‘Chto-to lepechet’ (‘Something is babbling’), a tribute to
the figure of Velemir Khlebnikov which celebrates his playful and creative
use of the Russian language, marks a decisive development in the evolution
of Bobyshev’s work:
Что-то лепечет
Что-то лепечет листва верховая –

это ночной Велемир, колоброд,
так выдыхает свои волхвованья …
Так, что изнанкой навыворот – рот!
Чуешь, и чувству такому не веришь,

но по вершинам идет налегке
наш коренной председатель и дервиш.
Только стихи шевелятся в мешке.
254 Chapter 5
В них разливаются чудью озерной

меря да кривичи с весью лесной.
То неразвернут язык, то разорван –
странно опасный, чудной, озорной.
Вместе – не каждым листком или словом –

общей листвою древлян и древес,
ясенной вязью и маслом еловым
скулы черёмит, шалит, куролес.
Как из ручейного бучила – вычур,

свирь саранчевую, птицын чирик –
прямо живьем, целиком закавычил
пращура – в свой беловой черновик.
Но не дремуч – лишь юродив и странен;

так и велит повернуть и не ждать
бывший на нашей земле будетлянин:
– В путь – сквозь былое – за будушим – вспять!
А упредят грановитые зерна

в нужную смерть – через прошлое – зов! –
что ж! И предтече отстать не зазорно
от воскрешателя мертвых отцов.
Общее дело листвы – облетанье …

Страшно сказать, но земля всё родней,
всё обитаемей в ней стала тайна:
труд сокровенных и сладких корней.
The mounted leaves are babbling something – / it is night-time Velemir [Khlebnikov],
a wanderer,/ who breathing out his incantations like this …/ So that the inside of your
mouth is turned – inside out!// You feel, and you don’t believe such a feeling,/ but
in the treetops, unencumbered, is walking/ our root chairman and dervish./ Only
poems are rustling in his bag.// Like lacustrine wonder, in them overflows/ the Merya
and Krivichi, with the wood-dwelling Ves./ Now your tongue won’t unfold, now it’s
Dmitry Bobyshev 255
torn –/ it’s strangely dangerous, wonderful, mischievous.// Together – not leaf by

leaf or word by word – / the overall leafage of Drevlians and trees,/ with ash script
and fir oil/ he stretches the mouth, plays the fool, the prankster.// As though from a
streaming whirlpool, he takes something extraordinary,/ the buzzing of locusts, the
chirrup of a bird/ directly alive and in one he puts into speech marks/ the primogeni-
tor, they go straight into his fair rough copy.// But he is not dense, only holy-foolish
and strange;/ thus he instructs us to turn and not wait,/ our futurist who once lived
on our earth:/ – On the road – through the past – beyond the future – backwards!//
And grains like gemstones predict/ a call – to a death that must come – via the past!–/
so what! And there’s nothing shameful in the forerunners lagging / behind the res-
urrectionist of dead fathers.// The general business of leaves is to fly everywhere …/
It’s terrible to say, but the earth is all the more dear,/ the secret in it has become all
the more habitable:/ the work of the innermost sweet roots.
Here Bobyshev plays on the etymologies of words and draws attention to

the Slavic roots of Russian language and culture. The image of the tree is
at the centre of the poem: it begins with the rustling of the leaves in the
treetops, which is the sound of Khlebnikov – characterised as a kind of
tree-dwelling word magician – murmuring his poems. The sound of these
poems is emphasised above all; they are described as tongue-twisters, and
the alliteration and internal rhymes re-create their effect in this poem.
Repetition of syllables or combinations of letters in sequences of words
link lines together like a chain. In the first stanza ‘vydykhaet’ (breathes
out) finds an echo in ‘volkhvovan'ya’ (incantations), and in the next line
‘navyvorot’ (inside out) is partially repeated in ‘rot’ (mouth); the begin-
ning of the second stanza sees the repetitions of the root ‘chu’ in ‘chuesh'’
(you sense) and ‘chuvstvo’ (feeling), and then ‘verish'’ (you believe) at the
end of the first line is echoed in ‘vershinam’ (heights) in the following line.
This dense patterning of sound continues throughout the poem, and to a
considerable extent dictates its development and movement.
Although Khlebnikov is in the treetops, where the sounds of the words
are like the rustling of the leaves, he is also described as the ‘root chair-
man’, since he is the master of play with roots and etymology. Bobyshev
imitates Khlebnikov’s technique, with unusual, sometimes archaic words
such as ‘kolobrod’ (wanderer) and ‘buchilo’ (whirlpool); with puns such
as on the adjective ‘korennoi’ (root); and by introducing the names of old
Slavic and Finnish tribes that ‘overflow’ in Khlebnikov’s language: ‘merya’,
256 Chapter 5
‘krivichi’, ‘ves'’ and, in stanza 4, ‘drevlians’, which has the root meaning
‘tree-dwellers’. The metaphor of the tree develops into a broader sense of
Khlebnikov’s work growing organically from nature, with the image of him
taking sounds and images from nature and incorporating them whole into
his poems. His paradoxical ‘fair rough draft’ suggests that Khlebnikov did
not have to re-work his poems, because they are organic rather than artful;
the sense that language is the driving force behind the movement of the
poem contributes to this idea of their organic development.
The final stanza continues with the metaphor of the tree: at the roots
of the poems celebrated here are the roots of the language from which
they are constructed, and among these roots there is a secret and nour-
ishing place that has become more kindred to Bobyshev. He finds in his
language and its history the secrets to new creativity in his work. The last
stanza of the poem reads like a manifesto, setting out a determination to
find inspiration and renewed creativity in the Russian language, and is
bold, exciting, and unusually dynamic in its use of language: in the second
half of the 1970s, such varied, creative, often alliterative language is a great
strength in his work.
A Clearer View
In 1977, the year that he wrote ‘Chto-to lepechet’, Bobyshev also began work
on his major long poem Russkie tertsiny (Russian tercets); he completed it in
1981 in the United States, three years after he left the USSR. In this work,
he returns again to The Divine Comedy as a model, and this time uses the
form of Dante’s poem: 91 stanzas written in terza rima (rhyming aBa BcB
cDc D), numbered 0–90. It is written with the ‘clearer view’ of life that
Bobyshev feels he gained when he left the USSR. The use of the personal
pronoun ‘we’ rather than a lyrical ‘I’, emphasizes that this work is a public
statement, a civic poem on the state of the nation. It meanders through a
Dmitry Bobyshev 257
wealth of topics, references and images in a quest to diagnose Russia’s ills,

misfortunes, and mistakes.
In the opening stanzas, Bobyshev establishes that this work will present
an unflinching interrogation of Russia’s history and present situation, and
of the reasons for its problems and failings. Many sections are devoted
to Soviet Russia: its politics, economics, and science, the history of the
Revolution and revolutionary thought, the atmosphere of fear and intimi-
dation amongst intellectuals, and the legacy of Stalinism. In stanzas 8 and
9, the speaker imagines how the USSR must appear to a foreign tourist,
with its ballet, speeches and jubilees, leaders and vodka drinking. Behind
this façade, however, he sees the country slipping down a slope of decline
and decay. This panorama of the country also encompasses Russian history
and literary tradition which have led to this point in time: it examines pre-
revolutionary Russia’s origins and development from Slavic mythology and
folklore through to nineteenth-century writers and thinkers in the search
for some understanding of the present day.
There is no chronological structure in this poem, and its references
can shift from a European cultural figure such as Erasmus to the specific
details of Soviet life and culture such as the dissidents Yakir and Krasin,
or the destroyer Storozhevoi whose captain mutinied in 1975. With such
changes, the poem maintains dynamism and, moreover, weaves a dense
fabric from Russian and European history and culture, demonstrating
the continuities and connections that exist between the Soviet era and
the rest of European and Russian history. It is encyclopaedic in its range
of reference and depth of detail; by using so many references and images,
Bobyshev asserts that his view of Russia is founded on concrete observations
and historical knowledge and evidence. Altogether, this very factual and
detailed text pushes the poem towards a more ‘objective’ representation
of Russia, which is crucial to its project of debunking myths and seeing
through propaganda and lies.
As a writer who aims to confront Russia and to diagnose its prob-
lems, Bobyshev is aware he is the latest in a long cultural tradition. He
makes numerous references to the lineage that his work is heir to: figures
and traditions mentioned include religious thinkers, Slavophiles and
Westernisers, nineteenth-century critical realists, and Soviet dissidents.
258 Chapter 5
These references, together with quotations from many Russian writ-

ers, form a montage of ideas and images and contrast with obviously
Soviet rhetoric and language that are mimicked and parodied. In stanza
7, Bobyshev refers to the symbolists of the Silver Age of Russian poetry
and asks whether or not his time will be similarly named after its poets:
from the outset, he is self-conscious about his position as a Russian writer
and the project of his poem.
The central question of the poem is what has gone wrong in Russia,
and the comparator throughout, sometimes implicit sometimes explicit,
is the USA. Looking back at Russia from across the Atlantic, Bobyshev
sees images of sickness, decay, repression, inefficiency, and perceives more
clearly what has been lost, squandered, or forgotten. The sickness of the
Body Politic is a recurring theme: corruption, hypocrisy and doublespeak
are presented as defining features of Russia, where ‘Shizofreniya – zhizn', a
ne bolezn'.’ (Schizophrenia is life, not an illness.) Bobyshev experienced the
decrepitude of Soviet society and culture at first hand when, after gradu-
ation, he worked for some years as a scientist in a closed institute whose
projects and activities were state secrets.6 Such institutes were known as
‘post boxes’, and stanza 58 derides the secrecy and grandeur of such places
which wasted so many resources on pointless work while the basic needs
of the population were not being met:
58.
Почтовый яшик. Нет, не на стене,
а многостенный, тысячеколонный,
с охраной – от обычного втройне.
Какие там сгнивают миллионы!

Пустить бы на «портнянки для ребят»,
но нет. Запрет. И лозунг намалеван:
6 Ya zdes', pp. 247–52.

Dmitry Bobyshev 259
«ЗА БДИТЕЛЬНОСТЬ!» Секретно всё подряд –

журнал из-за границы; марка стали.
Успехи техники. Парт-аппарат.
А самый-то секрет – КАК МЫ ОТСТАЛИ.

A post box. No, not the type you find in a wall, but with many walls and a thousand
columns,/ with security – three times more than usual.// How many millions are
languishing there!/ You should release them to work on ‘making children’s trousers’,/
but no. Prohibition. And a slogan painted up:// ‘FOR VIGILANCE!’ Everything is
secret, regardless –/ a magazine from abroad; the grade of steel./ The success of tech-
nology. The Party apparatchiks./ But the real secret is HOW BEHIND WE ARE.
Both before and during the Thaw, the ideal of progress and develop-
ment in the USSR was enshrined in the transformation of Russia from its
backward, religious state to an enlightened future society based on scientific
principles. Stanza 42 describes how, by the Brezhnev era, this ‘progress’ has
led to such drunkenness and disillusionment that members of the intel-
ligentsia are dropping out of society. In a play on the nineteenth-century
idea of ‘turning to the people’, Bobyshev suggests that Soviet society has
pushed people to abandon ideals and hopes, reducing them to life at the
most basic level of a working class or peasant population:
Да, это мы толпою шли в народ.

Учили: «Человек – от обезьяны.
Все люди братья. Значит, бей господ».
Увы, из нас повыбили изъяны

вот этой самой «будущей зари».
Теперь учить и некого – все пьяны –
и некому … А что ни говори,

ведь мы и есть народ. Да, тот, который …
И вот идем толпой в золотари!
В – наладчики, кондуктора, вахтеры …

260 Chapter 5
Yes, we went in droves to the people./ They taught us: ‘People are descended from
apes. All men are brothers. So attack the upper class.’// Alas, they beat out of us the
failings/ of this very ‘future dawn’./ Now there is no one to teach – they are all drunk
–// and no one to learn … And whatever you say,/ after all we are the people. Yes,
the ones who …/ And so we go as a crowd to become toilet cleaners!// And handy-
men, conductors, watchmen …
The menial jobs described here – toilet cleaners, handymen, conductors,

and watchmen – are indeed the kinds of jobs that young people and espe-
cially poets in the 1960s and 1970s took instead of pursuing careers. He
presents this less as a position of opposition and protest, and more a sign
of disillusionment and stagnation in a society that had been created by the
appointment of crude Darwinism to replace religion. This change created
a spiritually and intellectually impoverished society, since people were
encouraged to see themselves as descended from apes and as a consequence
no longer found the inspiration to live more fulfilled or creative lives.
The irony, parodies of slogans, and mimicry of colloquial Russian
speech are in stark contrast with Bobyshev’s earlier lyrical and meditative
poems. His civic concerns are expressed in the language and rhetoric of
public statement rather than private reflection. At only a few points in the
poem does the tone change, and a lyric voice emerge. Stanza 60, which
brings to a close the second part of the poem, is perhaps the most lyrical
moment; here, as he wonders how all the efforts put into agriculture under
Khrushchev can have failed so dramatically, his vituperation is softened by
the higher register of the language and the evocation of the old world of
the Russian North settled long ago and so recently abandoned:
Какая крепь лесов! Какие реки!

Громаднейшие избы. Старина.
Селились тут, на Севере, навеки.
А – ни души. Вся жизнь умерщвлена.

Кто этот ворог и откуда взялся?
– А коллективизация? Война?
Dmitry Bobyshev 261
А весь подъем аграрного хозяйства

с оттоком сил в промышленную сеть,
с подснежной кукурузой – не сказался?
Тишайшая, умильнейшая смерть.

What a wealth of forests! What rivers!/ The most enormous huts. The old world./
They settled here, in the North, forever.// But there’s not a soul. All life has been
destroyed./ Who is this enemy and where has he come from?/ – And collectivisation?
The war?// And the whole boost in agriculture/ with the drain into the industrial
network,/ the snow-covered maize – has this not taken its toll?// The most silent
and sweetest death.
This lyricism brings to mind his earlier poems that evoked the old, religious
world of this region. His sadness at the country’s abandonment is elegiac:
while it identifies the failure of the push for agriculture of the 1950s, it also
laments the death of a culture and world. With the opening of Part Three
this lyrical, elegiac tone disappears, however, and is replaced with the more
challenging and accusatory tone that characterises much of the poem. Even
at the end, in stanza 90, the wistful tone does not resurface; instead, the
poem finishes with a more defiant position. There is a sense of nostalgia in
the images of Russia that he presents, but a firm conviction that his freedom
in emigration outweighs the costs of leaving Russia behind:
Да не сочтется эта речь за наглость:

– Не «Городу и Миру», – ей о ней,
стране моей сказал я с глазу на глаз
ей-ей же праву … Издали видней.

И ежели я не увижу боле,
как говорится, до скончанья дней
картофельное в мокрых комьях поле,

сарай, платформу в лужах и вокзал, –
ну, что ж, пускай. Предпочитаю волю
Умру зато – свободным. Я сказал.

262 Chapter 5
But this speech will not be considered insolence:/ – Not ‘Urbi et orbi’, – to her about
her,/ to my country, face to face// I’ve told the truth indeed … It’s clearer from afar./
And if I never see again,/ as they say, to the end of my days// the damp clods of potato
fields,/ a barn, the platform covered in puddles and the station, –/ well, what of it,
let it be so. I prefer freedom// and I will die a free man. I’ve said my piece.
The poem is an assertion of independence and individual freedom,

not only from the repressive Soviet regime, but also from pressure to be
patriotic, to believe in national myths, or to identify with other Russians.
The most important statement it makes, however, is about Bobyshev’s
new direction in poetry. The range of register and diction is strikingly
wider than in his earlier work: he combines elevated diction with a liberal
admixture of archaisms, Slavonicisms, and neologisms, and low-style, col-
loquial language peppered with slogans, Soviet slang, and Americanisms
to create a more discordant, challenging and striking voice. In this poem,
such language is used to great effect, even though overall, Russkie Tertsiny is
too disjointed to hold together as a successful long poem (poema). It marks
the beginning of the American period of Bobyshev’s work, during which
the experience of emigration apparently spurred him on to new heights in
language, subjects and form.
The Other World of America
Russkie tertsiny is a notably civic poem about Russia’s history and society,
and is crammed with references to its people, places and events. Bobyshev’s
poems of the 1980s, which express his response to and understanding of
America, are significantly different in character and tone. It is as though
he has been freed from the constraints of history, tradition, and legacy: he
responds to America intuitively, imaginatively, and often personally. The
religious belief that permeated much of his earlier work provides a frame-
work for understanding this new world, but whereas earlier works sought
intimations of the divine, now America is described with spectacular and
Dmitry Bobyshev 263
grotesque imagery of the earthly world. This change in focus is striking,

and points to a different poetic response to the world. The American poems
describe aspects and images of the world that are material, corporeal, sexual,
even profane; we sense that the poet no longer only observes the world, he
now experiences its immediacy and imperfection, and in doing so discovers
paradox, beauty and pathos.
Bobyshev’s first poetic response to America, the cycle of ten poems
‘Zvezdy i polosy’ (‘Stars and stripes’), is full of the conflicting feelings of
excitement and disgust of a Russian émigré confronted with abundance,
freedom, and openness of the West. The figure of the poet is lightly mocked
as his cherished spirituality and conservative values are challenged by great
cities such as New York. The strange and bewildering experience of emigra-
tion is imagined in many ways. The second poem of the cycle, ‘Tot svet’ (‘The
other world’), describes the journey to America as the passage of the dead
to the next world. There is no way back along this path for a speaker whose
funeral was held before he left. In ‘Bol'shoe yabloko’ (‘The big apple’), on
the other hand, the speaker greets New York by throwing off his slavishness,
suggesting that arrival is liberation. The sense of alienation, and correspond-
ing desire to belong, is felt strongly in ‘Indeiskoe more’ (‘Indian Ocean’),
while a simple sense of gratitude for being in such an abundant and varied
country creeps into ‘Lesnaya polupolosa’ (‘Forest half-string’). In all the
poems, the language is dense, suggesting that the experience is intense.
The descriptions of New York in ‘Bol'shoe yabloko’ are expressive of
Bobyshev’s conflicting responses to America. The city is described in physi-
ological terms, creating the sense of it as an organism in its own right. At first
it is a youth whose strength, energy and power impresses the observer:
Крепкий подноджий утес

выпер наружу.
Нерушимую стать мускулисто напружив,
будь на месте, как врос,
каменный друже.
Твой чернореберный торс
встал на мусоре Мира в нешуточный рост.
То-то вымахал дюже.
264 Chapter 5
A strong cliff underfoot/ projected outwards./ With your unbreakable figure flexed
like a muscle,/ stand in your place, as though rooted to the spot,/my stone friend./
Your black-ribbed torso / has risen on the rubbish of the world to a height that’s no
joke./ You’ve grown up so strapping.
In the following stanza, however, the city is described as Sodom, and its
initial allure is tempered by the disquieting image of it as a brain: its many
windows are lit up in a pattern like some kind of code that inspires in its
observer first timidity, then lust, and finally shame. The poem has moved
very quickly from an image of youth and health, to a tainted and disturbing
organism. Yet this is in turn superseded: America’s message of acceptance
and tolerance leads the speaker to exhort the city to be itself, even if it is
sinful and weak. With reference to the epigraph, the Biblical riddle from
Judges 14.14 ‘Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came
forth sweetness’, the city is now envisaged as paradoxically dead yet alive,
the carcass of a lion with a bees nest inside it turning the strong lion into
sweet honey:
Сожран, а все же не мертв.

Жив, и немало …
А ядущий да будет ядóм до отвала!
Тот, кто примет, – поймет:
враз разорвало
льва-монолита вразмет.
Вижу – рой в этом трупе, и соты, и мед.
Сладким сильное стало.
Eaten but not dead after all./ Alive, and how much …/ And the eater will be meat
more than enough!/ He who accepts, will understand:/ all at one the lion-monolith
exploded and dispersed./ I see there’s a swarm in this corpse, and comb, and honey./
The strong has become sweet.
This vision neither rejects nor approves the city and its life, but finds
a unsettling image that communicates the sense of both its decay – or at
least decadence – and its life. The Biblical origin of the image points to
a yardstick for measuring this new world’s worth and morality, but still
Dmitry Bobyshev 265
America does not emerge as unequivocally negative. Though there is little

doubt it is a fallen world, in its details we find many redeeming images of
tainted beauty. The close of the poem similarly suggests the acceptance of
a less than perfect world: the exhortation to ‘munch like a maggot on the
big apple’ is an acknowledgement of the need to embrace and engage with
this imperfect earthly life.
Visual imagery is a hallmark of Bobyshev’s poetry. From his earliest
work he has written of visions, and now his portrait of America is of a
wondrous and monstrous new world which prompts, as Russia and nature
have done in his earlier works, efforts to understand our lives and their
meaning. He no longer seeks to discern only divine and otherworldly signs
in this world, however: he extols the virtues of participating in the sinful
yet splendid life of the West. The fullness of the experience becomes the
cornerstone of his vision of American life, and his work apparently finds
virtue in complete submission to the wealth of sensations and experiences
available. The eighth poem of ‘Zvezdy i polosy’, ‘Polnota vsego’ (‘The full-
ness of everything’), describes how the individual is drawn to this complex
whole. The city is described once more as a brain, this time pulsating and
dissected, and the soul, too, is drawn to expose and open up itself, desir-
ing to splatter all that was inside outwards, in the curls and curves of the
air. This impulse to become a part of the greater sum of all things is felt
by the individual, who desires to become part of the great metalanguage
written by the city:
И – числить этажи, сиречь – слова,

не “богом из машины”, а машиной,
сказуемой из глотки божества,
где, знаками осмысленно блистая

(сим электронным мега-языком),
горит надчеловеческая тайна,
с которой ты дикарски незнаком,
но силишься вписаться в начертанья.
266 Chapter 5
And – count the storeys, which is to say, the words,/ not ‘deus ex machina’, but a
machine, produced from the throat of a deity,// where, consciously shining with
signs/ (this electronic metalanguage),/ a superhuman secret burns,/ and you, like a
savage, don’t understand it,/ but you try to write yourself into its outlines.
Although in this vision of the city there is a deity at its heart, at the same
time its wholeness exists outside morality. The ‘cityosaur’, as Bobyshev calls
it, is a monster that satisfies every need and desire, and grants the individual
the freedom to define and create himself. Like the maggot in the big apple,
the image at the end of this poem of the young Methusalah ‘filled with
sounds and days’ is an embodiment of experience, of life lived fully.
In this cycle, Bobyshev embraces a panoramic vision of life in America
which he does not seek to justify, but hopes to capture and give full expres-
sion to. It is striking how far he extends the boundaries of his language in
this work, including Americanisms, neologisms, and archaisms: indeed,
Bobyshev’s response to America is most encapsulated in his newly invig-
orated, enriched and extended poetic language, which reflects America’s
abundance and variety, and the great contrasts between its beauty and
vulgarity. This linguistic reflection of the world continues in other works,
and is a manner of tribute to America. It is not surprising that another
of Bobyshev’s great poems about America, ‘Zhizn' urbanskaya’ (‘Urbana
life’), takes the form of an ode. It is modelled on Derzhavin’s celebration
of bucolic life ‘Evgeniyu. Zhizn' Zvanskaya’ (‘To Evgeny. Life at Zvanka’),
and the four parts of this poem are unequivocal in their appreciation of
American life, and uncompromising in their use of his full-blown ‘Baroque’
language.
In Russkie tertsiny Bobyshev asserted his allegiance to Derzhavin and
the ‘Beseda’ group of poets who opposed Karamzin and the Arzamastsy and
the foreign influences they brought to Russian literature in the nineteenth
century. He argued that the shift in Russian poetry that was brought about
by the Pushkin Pleiad meant that that the tradition of Russian verse that
goes back to Slovo o polku Igorevo was forgotten, and he expressed regret
that Arzamas won the argument and established the European style of
salon verse in Russia. The ode ‘Zhizn' urbanskaya’ foregrounds his continu-
ation of this pre-Pushkinian tradition, while at the same time presenting
Dmitry Bobyshev 267
yet more examples of unconventional poetic language. Attention to the

roots of the language, archaic forms, and prepositions uncoupled from
their noun phrases, remind us that Bobyshev’s style combines the con-
servative tradition of Derzhavin with the experiments of the Slavophile
Futurists. In the first section, the juxtaposition of Native American and
Russian names produces a Futurist-sounding invitation to experience what
America can offer:
И – в Минехаху, а то – в Кикапу,
в Пивуоки, в Чатанугу с Чучею,
на чувачную – ту, что по броду – тропу:
по раста-барам тебя попотчую …
And to Minnehaha, and then to Kickapoo,/ Pewaukee, Chattanooga with Chucheya,/
on a chuvak’s path, the one across the ford:/ I’ll take you out round the Rasta
bars …
While the language and form assert Bobyshev’s allegiance to schools of

Russian poetry, the subject here is his sense of belonging to America. Word
play and dazzling, innovative sound again create the sense of abundance
and exuberance about the new world, but this is expressed not from the
point of view of an outsider, as we saw in ‘Zvezdy i polosy’, but of a convert
who is zealous in his endorsement of the new life he has adopted. What is
more, ‘Zhizn' urbanskaya’ does not attempt a sweeping characterization
of American life; on the contrary, the poem celebrates ‘Illinoishchina’ and
‘Urbanagorodchina’ – two neologisms invented to refer specifically to the
phenomenon of life in Urbana-Champagne, Illinois. Describing the details
of the poet’s life there – his house, the university where he works, a barbecue
with friends – it constitutes a personal statement that modern American
life can provide the inspiration and creative impetus for a Russian poet to
go on writing in exile:
А если Вену, Рим, Берлин или Париж

ты с ходу про: фу-фу в воздушном перемахе,
то это место – здесь, где оду ты родишь, –
американский супермаркет.
268 Chapter 5
And if Vienna, Rome, Berlin or Paris/ you’ve flown past without a second thought,/
then this place is where you’ll give birth to an ode – / an American supermarket.
This combination of an echo of Derzhavin and reflection of the

American mid-West asserts Bobyshev’s peculiar identity as ‘the first
Leningrad-Milwaukee poet (ever) … at the end of the Leningrad (Imperial
Petersburg) tradition and perhaps at the beginning of the Milwaukee one.’7
It confirms that his work in emigration will involve both Russian and
American subjects and language; section 3 again relishes foreign names and
even highlights the fact that, for some elements of American life, Russian
does not have an adequate vocabulary:
Вон кружка: бок в росе и пена набекрень, –

отрадно-горек Пабст, и Огсбургер, и Пильзень,
Колбасный арсенал, ветчиный потетень!
Копченых дрынов полный список …
Но если угощать – тогда в два пальца стейк,

и – пять минут на сторону – на гриле …
Прости мой анклицизм, – я точно не из тех
кто б волапюком говорили.
А просто слов таких «в забавном слоге» – нет.

По-русски ли сказать: «бифштекс» и «на мангале»?
И прыщет сок мясной, когда мы с Каберне,
а то – с Бургундским налегаем.
Here’s a mug: with dew on its sides and foam overflowing,/ a joyfully bitter Pabst,
and Ausburger, and Pilsner./ An arsenal of sausage, a jingle of hams!/ An inventory
of smoked batons …// But if you have guests, then steak two fingers thick,/ and
five minutes each side on the grill …/ Excuse my Anglicism, I’m just not the type of
person/ who would like to speak Volapuk.// But simply, words like this do not exist
7 Barbara Heldt, ‘The Other Worlds of Dmitry Bobyshev’, World Literature Today
(Winter 1984), 27–30, p. 27.
Dmitry Bobyshev 269
in ‘the merry style’./ Should one say in Russian ‘Bifshteiks’ or ‘on the mangal’?/ And
meat juice spurts, as we get on with our Cabernet or perhaps a Burgundy.
There is a sense that the linguistic difficulty in expressing the American

experience here demonstrates the way that emigration has expanded
Bobyshev’s poetry beyond parameters that previously held. He suggests
that his embracing of America and American life is in contrast with other
Russian poets: in section 4, thinly disguised references suggest that Iosif
Brodsky and Lev Loseff are Russian poets who remain only Russian in their
outlook and, unlike Bobyshev, do not use their new experiences to enrich
their outlook and work. It is worth noting, however, that this reference
speaks more of the unhealed rift between these Leningrad poets in exile
than it does of any profound difference between their attitudes towards
Russian poetry in emigration.
Bobyshev’s new subjects, language, imagery and references, and a broad
and generous vision of life which admits the fullness of experience, are
not only a reflection of his new American lifestyle. His major cycle ‘Zveri
svyatogo Antoniya’ (‘The Beasts of St Anthony’) marries this breadth of
vision with a religious subject, reminiscent of the Christian traditions of
vivid illustrations of the sins and ills of the world in carving and painting.
These poems were written as part of a joint project with the Russian artist
in exile Mikhail Shemyakin: Bobyshev’s poems were written to accompany
the artist’s drawings. His poetic portraits of the sixteen beasts which tor-
mented St Anthony are carnal, splendid and grotesque. All make references
to at least copulation or consumption, and very often both. The language
is not prudish: the poems are awash with blood, saliva, and semen, and
full of orifices and phalluses, introducing boldly physiological, anatomical
and sexual imagery hitherto virtually absent from Russian poetry. In the
thirteenth poem, ‘Pavlin’ (The Peacock), for example, the peacock’s gaudy
dress expresses his perverse desires:
270 Chapter 5
О, роскошью блеснуть, напялив перья,

все перлы нацепив, и макияж
на рожу кинув,
первым (первой)
брызгнуть спермой
анальной, смещанной с пометом,
впадая в гордый раж.
В сокровищах ногами рыться

быть женщиной, наконец,
в сияющих грехах …
Гляди:
красавица и крыса, –
крылато-радужная бабочка-бабец.
O, to dazzle with luxury, feathers on,/ pearls fastened, and make-up/ slapped on
the face,/ as pre-eminent guy (or girl)/ to splash in anal sperm mixed with shit,/
surrendering to a ostentatious frenzy.// To rummage through treasures with your
feet/ to be a woman, at last,/ in radiant sinfulness …/ Look:/ a beauty and a rat,–/
rainbow-winged butterfly-old-bat.
This series of poems presents a parade of desires and instincts enshrined

in bodies. The animals are driven by the needs of their flesh, which are
given full expression in this portrait of shameless lust. In order to convey
the full glory of each beast in its abasement, Bobyshev employs the full
range of the ‘Baroque’ poetic language that he has developed over earlier
works: rich alliteration, slang, archaisms and Slavonicisms, neologisms,
physiological imagery, and even typographical arrangements combine
to create a sensuous and immediate effect. The snakes are evoked with
alliteration: ‘nevidimo/ shurshashchie v trave/ shipyashchie shchavelevo
iz yamy’ (invisibly rustling in the grass, hissing like sorrel from a pit); the
termites with alliterative repetition and diminutives: ‘Chto za pupochki,
pipochki, tochki, mnogo tochek?’ (What are these little belly-buttons,
pip-squeaks, dots, many pinpricks?); while the end of the poem about the
elephant is organised in a diagonal column that represents the enormous
phallus described with horror and awe:
Dmitry Bobyshev 271
Она, потупясь, ждет.

А он – жрет корень,
дабы супруге недра взрыть …
Ей достается плод.
И прыть:
плодить, покуда есть такое:
взрастающее:
вдрызг:
и – взбынь!
втемяшиванье тесное
меж
лядвий;
откры-
тие
чудо-
вищное
в яви:
– Раз-
двинь!
Eyes lowered, she waits./ He munches the root,/ so that he can reach his spouse’s
depths …/ She receives a little fruit./ And the energy:/ to bear fruit, while this lasts://
it’s growing: absolutely:/ and wow!/ a tight way in/ between/ flanks;/a mon-/ strous/
open-/ ing/ in reality:/ pull them apart!
Among the beasts there are imaginary, mythical and fantastic creatures:
the griffons, the unicorn, the phoenix, and the metaphysical beast created
from the individual’s own fear. It is a menagerie that includes extremes of
passion, lust, fear, and debasement. At the close of this grotesque parade
comes the pig, with which St Anthony is often associated. Its portrait is
similar to those of the other animals in its carnal and anatomical imagery;
more than the others, however, this poem emphasises the reduction of life
to a basic, physiological level. The pig’s life revolves around eating, sleep-
ing and drinking, and it sees no virtue in leaving its native muddy hole for
272 Chapter 5
a more elevated existence elsewhere, in reaching for something beyond

basic pleasures of life:
Хлевно, а зато не хуже,

чем на арфе благородный аккорд,
ей-ей,
даже лучше нахально лежать в луже
обжитой и по-родному своей!
It’s lowly, but then no worse,/ than the noble accord of a harp,/ ay-ay,/ it’s even better
to lie cheekily in a puddle/ that’s familiar and feels like home!
Its purely physical level of existence is reflected in the fate of its carcass
after slaughter: the procedures carried out are described in detail, and
constitute an exploration of body which will reveal the essence of the
creature as its flesh:
Тем интереснее с ней старанье

познать ее (плоть это суть):
связывая себя со свиньею астрально,
от самого куверху-низа
пузо ее полоснуть.
So much more interesting to try/ to get to know her (flesh is her essence):/ linking
oneself with the pig on an astral plane,/ from the very top to the bottom/ gutting
her belly.
The details of the gutting which follow are ugly and disgusting: not
only are the internal organs encountered one by one, the genitals and
then an unborn foetus are also removed. This, the poet states, is reality:
the stinking bowels and brains that offends his nostrils are now emptied
of sense or feeling: ‘V dokhlykh uzhe ne vidno ni zgi’ (In the dead there’s
nothing left to see). This reductive picture is the culmination of the pre-
ceding menagerie of animals: it all ends with death. Unselfconscious lust
and passion are treated in honest and unflinching detail, but so too is the
logical conclusion of such a base, physical existence. The pig is not the final
Dmitry Bobyshev 273
animal in the parade: it is followed by the poet’s own body, which tempts
him to lead a sinful life, distracts him from prayer, and tortures him with
desires, pain, ageing and other weaknesses. He condemns it to the menag-
erie of beasts described in the earlier poems, recognising it as part of the
sinful world that one day, as the final poem describes, will be redeemed
and readmitted to a state of grace. With this final vision of redemption and
salvation, the poem completes the story of St Anthony’s temptation and
its theological message.
While ‘Zveri svyatogo Antoniya’ returns to the religious themes of
Bobyshev’s earlier work, its poetic vision shares the ‘fullness’ developed in
the American poems ‘Zvezdy i polosy’ and ‘Zhizn' urbanskaya’. Crucially,
this new vision understands poetry as an element of the rich and varied
world, and recognises it as an artificial and seductive art. The title of the
opening poem of this cycle: ‘Iskushenie tvorchestvom’ (‘The temptation
of art’) expresses concisely this lynchpin of his mature work: that, like
the visions of St Anthony, art and poetry are seductive and deceptive in
their artifice and beauty. They belong to the mortal, sinful world, and are
most creative and beautiful when they capture its imperfect, fallen state.
From early poems which sought the divine, Bobyshev’s work developed
to embrace this expansive vision of the earthly world, and this important
shift enabled his language, skill, and vision to reach its fullest expression
and greatest achievements.
Chapter 6
Iosif Brodsky
When Iosif Brodsky first entered the world of Leningrad poetry he was
still in his teenage years and working in unskilled jobs. His limited formal
education and blue-collar employment, however, were not barriers to his
joining poetry groups or participating in other officially-sponsored literary
activities: Soviet ideology, after all, promoted the idea that the working
class should participate fully in the artistic and cultural life of the nation.
Nevertheless, the most prestigious and influential LITOS in Leningrad
in the 1950s and 1960s were attached mostly to institutes of higher educa-
tion and the majority of their members were from middle-class families
and in education. Brodsky shared these young poets’ social background,
but his occupation made him, to some degree, an outsider in their liter-
ary world. His position somewhat outside the mainstream Soviet institu-
tions of poetry and literature was further emphasised by the fact that he
never actually joined a LITO as a regular member. His having a degree of
distance from the ‘schooling’ in poetry that was provided by LITOs and
conferences and more generally by the socialisation of Soviet higher educa-
tion – discernible in his uncompromising attitude towards both form and
subject in even his earliest work – means his poems do not bear the stamp
of the system that some LITO poetry has.1 LITO leaders guided their
students to write in such a way as would comply with the requirements
for published poetry, thus enabling them to develop a career that would
lead eventually to acceptance by the Writers’ Union.
This is not to say that, during this formative period, Brodsky was not
engaged with Soviet literature. He and his poet-friends were reading the
older generation of Soviet writers, many of whom were still writing in the
1 Lev Loseff, Iosif Brodsky, p. 55.

276 Chapter 6
1950s, and he identified Slutsky in particular as a formative influence.2 For

Brodsky, many poets – both living and dead, Russian and foreign, famous
and unknown amateurs like himself – served as yardsticks against which
he could measure his own talent and ability. He tried to outdo them in
his own poetry as a way of spurring on his development. In this respect,
the milieu from which he emerged was crucial for him, just as it was to his
contemporaries: the constant company of poets his own age, together with
the friendship of literary figures much older and vested with significant
authority, created a serious and productive literary atmosphere in which
he flourished.
Brodsky’s experience of being a young poet in Leningrad turned out to
be dramatically different from that of his peers when he was arrested and
tried for parasitism in 1963–4 and, consequently, became widely known in
the West as a victim of Soviet repression. It seems likely that the traumatic
series of events had a profound effect on his thinking about the poet’s role
in society, since his persecution set him apart from his contemporaries and
thrust him into an important tradition of Russian poets who had challenged
autocratic authority. While his poetry avoids addressing the subject of his
position and role directly, it is implicitly discussed and is clearly a prob-
lematic question: his tone seems at times to embrace the position of Poet
who speaks for and about society, while at other times a self-deprecating
and often ironic persona seems to speak of anxiety about the aggrandise-
ment of this role. When he went into exile, his position as a Russian poet
was further complicated by international fame and yet dislocation from
Russian literature in the USSR. The poems in which he describes himself
as a nobody, an ageing and unrecognised man in a mackintosh, resonate
with larger questions about what his relationship to the Russian language
and poetic tradition was to be once he was in the West.
Brodsky’s work is included in this study in an attempt to set him more
firmly in context. The history of Leningrad poetry given in chapters one
and two have provided the background to his formative years as a poet; in
this chapter, I aim to incorporate an awareness of this background into the
2 Ibid., pp. 61–4.

Iosif Brodsky 277
reading of his poems, and also show how his work developed so dramati-
cally and creatively beyond the milieu of 1960s Leningrad poetry. After a
brief introduction to his earlier work, I examine poems from the early exile
period, during which he left behind his formative environment and fellow
poets and wrote some of his finest poems. In this work, we find the ideas,
tone and voice from the early poems developed into a more mature and
confident style; in particular, the impulse to push language to ever higher
forms of expression develops in the years 1972–5. It seems likely that his
challenging of the limitations of language grew out of a response to his
sense of isolation and alienation in the USSR, and was then nurtured and
developed by his experience of being separated from his country, family,
and native language. In his poetry, Brodsky sought freedom from the limita-
tions and boundaries that defined his life, a life at times he could describe
only as absurd. Through language, he found the means to challenge our
limited physical environment, the circumscribed political reality we live
in, and even our mortal, time-bound lives.
The inclusion of this chapter alongside studies of other major poets
of Brodsky’s generation is significant: it is my hope that the contrasts that
emerge between Brodsky’s work and that of his contemporaries will reveal
that his particular direction in Russian poetry was not the only route taken
by poets of his generation. His choices about influence, subject, form, and
language were made not in a vacuum, but in a particular literary milieu,
and other poets who belonged to his circles made different choices. The
study aims to make it possible to see him as a poet whose work began in
the poetry forums of Leningrad and grew through his experiences in the
USSR and later in emigration.
278 Chapter 6
Early Poems
Reading Brodsky’s early poems, it quickly becomes apparent that, from the
outset of his writing career, he was interested in developing his command
of poetic form. Very early poems such as ‘Ryby zimoi’ (‘Fish in winter’)
and ‘Piligrimmy’ (‘Pilgrims’) seem to be as concerned with formal aspects
as they are with content, and the range of forms that Brodsky employs in
the late 1950s and early 1960s suggests that he is actively experimenting
with line length, stanza form, rhyme scheme, and metre. Clearly, one influ-
ence on his thinking about form was his beloved jazz: in poems from the
cycle ‘Iyul'skoe intermetstso’ (‘July intermezzo’) written in 1961, he uses
structuring principles from music. The first poem ‘V pis'me na yug’ (‘In a
letter to the South’) begins:
Ты уехал на Юг, а здесь настали теплые дни,

нагревается мост, ровно плещет вода, пыль витает,
я теперь прохожу в переулке, всё в тени, всё в тени,
всё в тени,
а вблизи надо мной твой самолет пролетает.
You have left for the South, but here the warm days have started,/ the bridge is warm-
ing, the water splashes evenly, the dust swirls,/ I am now walking in an alley, all in
shade, all in shade, all in shade,/ and nearby above me your empty plane flies past.
In this and other poems, order is created through the use of motifs and
repetition, while elements that conventionally provide structure, such as
the line length and metre, vary greatly. In his later work, Brodsky does not
use such radically experimental form, but commonly employs long lines,
extensive enjambment, and innovative and exciting rhymes.
Though varied in subject, the poems of ‘Iyul'skoe intermetstso’ are
united by a wistful, elegiac tone and a nostalgic poetic voice. They look back
on the recent past, often reflecting that time has moved on, and there is sense
of sadness and emptiness as the voice of the speaker records the passing of
time and the realisation of what has been lost. Such a tone is common in
Iosif Brodsky 279
the early poems. Brodsky’s elegiac voice is somewhat reminiscent of T. S.

Eliot’s nostalgic voice in Prufrock and Other Observations, and is perhaps
not unusual in a young and precocious poet. It chimes with a theme that
also emerges in these early poems of being homeless, of having no real sense
of belonging to any place. In ‘Ya kak Uliss’ (‘I am like Ulysses’), also written
in 1961, we find a speaker who feels separate from his surroundings: as he
observes himself moving through Moscow streets, he cannot understand
what he is doing or where he is going:
И желтизна разрозненных монет,

и цвет лица криптоновый все чаще,
гони меня, как новый Ганимед
хлебну зимой изгнаннической чащи
и не пойму, откуда и куда

я двигаюсь, как много я теряю
во времени, в дороге повторяя:
ох, Боже мой, какая ерунда.
And there is the yellow of assorted coins,/ and the colour of face is more often kryp-
ton,/ chase me, like a new Ganymede/ I gulp from the wintry cup of exile// and do
not understand from where and whither/ I’m going, how much I’m losing/ in time,
repeating in the road/ Oh my God, what nonsense.
In ‘Instruktsiya opechalennym’ (‘Instructions to the disappointed’), written

the following year, again detached observation precedes a reflection on the
speaker’s profound sense of dislocation. The poem asserts that a sense of
homelessness can be felt in one’s own country as well as in a foreign place,
developing the idea that isolation is his permanent state:
Чужбина так же сродственна отчизне,

как тупику соседствует пространство.
A foreign country is just as related to a homeland,/ as a dead end is found close to
open space.
280 Chapter 6
This paradoxical and contradictory comparison is a precursor to Brodsky’s

later play with reasoning and impossible arguments. It points to his sense
of the world as surprising, absurd and illogical: clearly, even before he was
singled out by the authorities for persecution and exiled from his city, he
felt the sense of detachment from the world around him that is such a
central theme in his major works.
Brodsky’s internal exile in the village of Norenskaya was a particularly
productive period that saw a marked development in his poetry. Poems
written while he was away from Leningrad often feature his characteristic
use of extensive enjambment, creating the kind of detached, prose-like
tone that he adopts in many mature poems. The cycle of short poems
‘Novye stansy k Avguste’ (‘New stanzas to Augusta’), for example, writ-
ten in 1964, uses the kinds of extended sentences that blur the distinction
between separate lines:
Здесь, на холмах, среди пустых небес,

среди дорог, ведущих только в лес,
жизнь отступает от самой себя
и смотрит с изумлением на формы,
шумящие вокруг. И корни
вцепляются в сапог, сопя,
и гаснут все огни в селе.
И вот бреду я по ничьей земле
и у Небытия прошу аренду,
и ветер рвет из рук моих тепло,
и плещет надо мной водой дупло,
и скручивает грязь тропинки ленту.
Here, on the hills, among the empty skies,/ among roads that lead only into the forest,/
life steps back from itself/ and looks with surprise at the forms/ which are murmur-
ing around. And roots/ entwine themselves into boots, sniffling,/ and put out all the
lights in the village./ And so I wander along nobody’s land/ and ask for a lease from
Non-existence,/ and the wind tears warmth from my hands,/ and splatters with water
the hollow of a tree above me,/ and mud screws up the ribbon of the path.
Iosif Brodsky 281
Here, the observation of the landscape is interwoven with a sense of the

speaker’s isolation from other human beings and civilisation. There is no
direct statement of his emotions in the scene, yet, at the same time, the
pensive, slow voice that speaks, in such extended sentences, of an empty,
cold, and windblown landscape, creates the impression of a flat, detached
and poignant mood.
During the 1960s Brodsky wrote a number of poems which appear to
be studies. These take the form of imitation, even pastiche of the works of
other poets. Critics have pointed to his first attempt to use a metaphysical
conceit in the ‘Bol'shaya elegiya Dzhonnu Donnu’ (‘Great elegy to John
Donne’). Another notable and obvious example is the poem ‘Na smert'
T. S. Eliota’ (‘On the death of T. S. Eliot’), written 12 January 1965. The
poem follows almost exactly the rhythm and structure of W. H. Auden’s
poem ‘In Memory of W. B. Yeats’, so much so that it can hardly be called
an original poem. Brodsky’s purpose in writing it, one suspects, was to
learn from Auden’s original by using the same tone, form, and subject.
Such studies form part of his ‘competition’ with other poets, proving that
he could write as well as they could, before moving beyond them. What is
more, his focus on Anglo-American poets meant that he was significantly
broadening his poetic scope, enriching the variation of formative influences
that would help to create his individual voice.
The longer poems written during the 1960s, with the significant
exception of the long poem ‘Gorbunov i Gorchakov’ (‘Gorbunov and
Gorchakov’), are often less successful: it appears that, in the 1960s, Brodsky
was still experimenting and learning how to manage larger forms. In some,
such as ‘Polevaya ekloga’ (‘Field eclogue’), he mismatches a large-scale poem
with insufficient subject matter; others treat philosophical or political or
lyrical themes separately, and lack the synthesis of his later work. ‘Ostanovka
v pustyne’ (‘A halt in the desert’), for example, expresses an important state-
ment of Brodsky’s attitude towards Christianity in our culture, but does so
in remarkably bald language which lacks the immediacy and pathos found
in lyric poems from the same period. ‘Rech' o prolitom moloke’ (‘Speech
over spilt milk’) has a hostile and argumentative persona and is written in
uncharacteristically simple syntax: short sentences come in rapid fire in
each numbered stanza, with attacks on political positions and aggressive
282 Chapter 6
assertions of the persona’s beliefs. These poems are not without interest,
and are especially important as evidence of Brodsky’s intellectual and politi-
cal development,3 but they do not orchestrate ideas, poetic form, and lyric
voice with anything like the sophistication of his later poems.
A Voice of Reason
In the early 1970s, Brodsky began to write his mature work. The poems
are more assured and his voice becomes more recognisably individual. He
often assumes the self-assurance and certainty of a scientist or logician,
asserting connections and conclusions as though they have been arrived
at through rational deductions. It quickly becomes apparent, however,
that this seemingly rational discourse disguises the fundamentally sub-
jective and intuitive nature of his assertions. He frequently constructs
convoluted arguments with twists and turns of logic that can be difficult
to follow, but which lead to a conclusion that is surprisingly simple. The
complexity of the arguments, however, is just as important – if not more
so – than the conclusions. The drive behind the poems is not the search
for a rational and valid philosophical formulation, but the very process of
creative thinking. Inquiry and investigation constitute ends in themselves,
and Brodsky’s poems delight in cerebral leaps and bounds, in the mental
agility required to make connections and draw conclusions. He makes state-
ments and deductions that abound with non-sequiturs and illogicalities,
but this does not matter, because the poems thrive on the energy that ideas
and the process of argument generate. While it is true that some poems
demonstrate a considerable debt to various thinkers and ideas, it is also the
case that, in Brodsky’s mature work, these are employed in the poems to
3 In particular Lev Loseff has written about the formation of Brodsky’s political position
in poems of the 1960s in ‘Politics/Poetics’ in Lev Loseff and Valentina Polukhina,
eds, Brodsky’s Poetics and Aesthetics (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990) pp. 34–55.
Iosif Brodsky 283
represent what are fundamentally creative, aesthetic, and emotional, rather

than philosophical positions.4
In the first stanza of ‘Konets prekrasnoi epokhi’ (‘The end of a beautiful
era’), written in 1969, Brodsky creates a semblance of logic when he describes
how, out of necessity, he stepped out to buy an evening newspaper:
Потому что искусство поэзии требует слов,

я – один из глухих, облысевших, угрюмых послов
второсортной державы, связавшейся с этой, –
не желая насиловать собственный мозг,
сам себе подавая одежду, спускаюсь в киоск
за вечерней газетой.
Since the art of poetry demands words,/ I – one of the deaf, balding, gloomy ambas-
sadors/ of a second-rate power, that’s in conflict with this one, –/ not wishing to
abuse my own brain,/ passing my coat and hat to myself, descend to the kiosk/ for
the evening paper.
The opening line uses the kind of reasoning that is found in much of
Brodsky’s work: its formal style is typical of exposition, not lyric poetry.
What follows, too, is expressed in long, complex sentences that again are
reminiscent of prose and argument: lines and stanzas are ordered with con-
junctions and connecting words, so the poems are peppered with language
such as ‘potomu chto’ (because), ‘ibo’ (for), ‘tak kak’ (since), and ‘chtoby’
(in order to). Despite the imitation of logical deduction here, however, the
argument is not rational. The register of language is purposely mismatched
to the subject matter to ironic effect: the convoluted, somewhat grand-
sounding poem in fact provides an ironic and self-deprecating introduction
to the poet whose life should be dictated by the demands of poetry, but in
fact is taken up with the mundanity of life. Indeed, the self-portrait here
is typically somewhat gloomy, but also humorous and ironic.
4 G. S. Smith has suggested that the citation of Brodsky’s aphorisms out of context has
distorted the way that his ideas are understood, leading to a too philosophical read-
ing of his work: G. S. Smith, ‘Joseph Brodsky: Summing Up’, Literary Imagination
7.3 (2005), 399–410.
284 Chapter 6
It is not only Brodsky’s language and tone that foster a sense of logic
and rationality in his poems. This impression is also created through his
frequent observations of laws he sees as governing our environment and
behaviour. In ‘24 dekabrya 1971 goda’ (‘24 December 1971’), he considers
the emptiness of Christmas in the atheist USSR, and argues that even the
contemplation of this emptiness produces some kind of meaning. This
brings him to a conclusion that contravenes the fundamental law ‘ex nihilo
nihil fit’. In a similarly paradoxical vein, he identifies a ‘law’ according to
which efforts to deny the validity of religious belief will paradoxically
strengthen its survival:
Пустота. Но при мысли о ней

видишь вдруг как бы свет ниоткуда.
Знал бы Ирод, что чем он сильней,
тем верней, неизбежнее чудо.
Постоянство такого родства –
основой механизм Рождества.
Emptiness. But at the thought of it/ you suddenly see something like light that’s come
from nowhere./ Herod should have known that the more he grew strong,/ the more
certain and inescapable the miracle./ This kind of permanence/ is the fundamental
mechanism of Christmas.
The construction ‘chem … tem …’ (the more … the more …) used here
posits a correspondence between two conditions, and Brodsky’s choice
of the word ‘mechanism’ also implies that there is a law operating behind
this apparently paradoxical relationship. Christmas, as it is described here,
is one manifestation of a law governing psychological phenomena: where
we are faced with emptiness, we will tend to fill it with belief.
Many of Brodsky’s poems seem to foreground the processes of obser-
vation and perception. But while observations – and the deductions that
issue from them – appear to be axiomatic truths, in fact they are usually
subjective, and often intuitive, assertions. In a poem from the cycle ‘Chast'
rechi’ (‘A part of speech’), for example, we find an account of why the poet
began writing. Its starting point is a description of the geography and cli-
mate of his native Northern Russia:
Iosif Brodsky 285
Север крошит металл, но щадит стекло.

Учит гортань проговорить «впусти».
Холод меня воспитал и вложил перо
В пальцы, чтоб их согреть в горсти.
The North corrodes metal, but has mercy on glass./ It teaches the throat to utter
‘let him in’./ The cold brought me up and put a pen/ into my fingers, to warm them
in my cupped hand.
It is characteristic of Brodsky to begin with forces and processes acting in

the physical world, and to apply them beyond the real limit of their action.
The claim he makes here is not quite a metaphor; it is more a creative and
illogical extension of scientific reasoning and deduction.
Such observations and deductions create an ‘unemotional’, detached
tone in the poems.5 Brodsky’s voice emerges as cerebral, even though his
subjects are often not: the quasi-scientific language disguises the emotive
themes of the poems. ‘Pokhorony Bobo’ (‘Funeral of Bobo’), for example, is
a poem about death, grief, and, again, the human need to create meaning in
the face of its absence; yet the voice in the poem maintains a detached tone.
It is Audenesque in its uncomplicated language and everyday references,
and unadorned, bold pronouncements that express with weighty simplicity
the magnitude of death. The first three sections present observations and
reflections on the subject, and the fourth and final part builds on these to
construct an argument about the nature of death. It uses a kind of creative
reasoning that defies logic, even as it apes it:
Ты всем была. Но, потому что ты

теперь мертва, Бобо моя, ты стала
ничем – точнее, сгустком пустоты.
Что тоже, как подумаешь, немало.
5 Mikhail Meilakh identifies this as an important feature of Brodsky’s poems. See his
‘Liberation from Emotionality’, in Brodsky Through the Eyes, pp. 158–75.
286 Chapter 6
You were everything. But because you are/ now dead, my Bobo, you have become/
nothing, more specifically, a clot of emptiness./ That, too, when you think about
it, is something.
This argument only works because it draws the meanings of words from
different contexts: Bobo was ‘everything’ in the colloquial sense that she
meant ‘everything’ to the speaker, but, after death, she is transformed into
an abstract ‘nothing’. When, however, we contemplate the concept of noth-
ing, we can do so only in words, and words force us to say something. In
this last stage of the argument, Brodsky plays with the paradox that writ-
ing or thinking about nothing is inevitably self-defeating: he sets up this
logical trap, so that the contemplation of absence after death paradoxically
brings a poem into existence. ‘Pokhorony Bobo’ moves along a trajectory
that is not uncommon in Brodsky’s work: it begins with concrete images,
moves on into the realm of abstract ideas, and finally uses these ideas to
draw conclusions about the nature of language and poetry.
The construction of arguments using the appearance of logic and the
semblance of scientific reasoning is an important debt that Brodsky owes
to the English metaphysical poets, among whom he particularly admired
John Donne.6 Brodsky’s other debt to the English metaphysicals is his use
of the conceit as a poetic device. The long poem in fourteen numbered
stanzas, ‘Babochka’ (‘Butterfly’), written in 1972, uses a conceit to construct
a typically Brodskian argument. David Bethea has provided the context
for the writing of ‘Babochka’:
At the time of writing he attended a symphony concert of Mozart’s works with a

lady friend, and upon leaving the concert hall the woman joked with the poet that
the composer’s special brand of brilliance was not within his (Brodsky’s) reach.
Brodsky then responded by penning a verbal butterfly capable of competing with
Mozart’s musical notes.7
6 Lev Loseff, Iosif Brodsky, pp. 110–11.

7 David Bethea, Joseph Brodsky and the Creation of Exile (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1994), pp. 241–2.
Iosif Brodsky 287
It seems that Brodsky wrote this poem in a spirit similar to that in which
Donne and his contemporaries engaged in wit contests in their metaphysi-
cal poems. It also chimes with Brodsky’s need to compete with other poets,
dead and alive. Such competitive display of verbal agility and audacity has
sometimes been missed in commentaries on his poems, perhaps because
the sense of exuberance in the language of his poems contrasts with the
serious and moral statements about the meaning of language and poetry
that he tended to make in his prose. It is, however, a fundamental feature
of his poetry, and a key element of his indebtedness to Donne, Herbert
and others. His sense that language offers the freedom to be creative and
playful was particularly resonant when, at various points, his circumstances
seemed to reinforce his lack of freedom in life.
At the heart of the poem is the butterfly, represented both in the imagery
and also in the typographical arrangement of the stanzas on the page.
Its role is to provide a continuum: by repeatedly referring to the butterfly,
the poem creates a semblance of continuity through its arguments and ideas,
even where there are logic-defying leaps of imagination. It is a perfect vehicle
for the kind of creative reasoning and argument that Brodsky favours in his
work. The tiny body of a dead butterfly raises questions about the purpose
of such beauty that lives so briefly. These lead to a broader consideration
of the nature of the butterfly’s – and our – creator, and of the purpose of
our existence, however brief.
In the opening stanza, the dead butterfly lies in the persona’s hand.
Its life lasted just one day. In the first of several attempts to define the but-
terfly, the poem begins by questioning whether or not one could really
describe it as dead:
Сказать, что ты мертва?

Но ты жила лишь сутки
Can I say that you are dead?/ But you lived only one day
288 Chapter 6
Since days are so transient they are like nothing, the poem argues that the
butterfly must also be like nothing. Yet the body lies in the persona’s hand,
and stanza III tries again to define the butterfly:
Сказать, что вовсе нет

тебя? Но что же
в руке моей так схоже
с тобой? и цвет –
не плод небытия.
По чьей подсказке
и так кладутся краски?
Навряд ли я,
бормочущий комок
слов, чуждых цвету,
вообразить бы эту
палитру смог.
Can I say that you don’t exist at all? But then what is it/ in my hand that is so similar/
to you? and this colour/ is not the fruit of non-being./ Who directed/ the placement
of these colours?/ I, muttering a ball of words that are alien to colour, could hardly
have conceived of this palette.
The repeated attempt to define the butterfly speaks of a need to explain

the physical world. Typically, Brodsky’s thought process begins in such
concrete terms; but quickly the butterfly before him points to questions
about abstract ideas.
The butterfly’s body not only affirms that it was once alive; the latter
lines of stanza III argue that the beautiful colours on its wings also posit
the existence of a creator. The beauty and colours are beyond the poet’s
own skill, so he concludes that there must be a creator somewhere who
has so skilfully created the pattern on the insect’s wings. Moreover, the
butterfly’s pattern incorporates features of a portrait, objects of a still life,
and elements of a landscape: in it one can find a reflection of all aspects of
the world, pointing to a vision much broader than his own. At the same
time as it paradoxically embodies the very idea of nothing, therefore the
butterfly’s existence also points to a universe and its creator, which is to
Iosif Brodsky 289
say everything. The figure of the creator sets both the butterfly and the
poet into a traditional hierarchy: the butterfly holds the representation of
the world on its wings, and we are part of that world, but ultimately both
have been created by another being. The visual image of the butterfly in a
lepidopterist’s tweezers becomes a metaphor for the human condition in
a world created by and at the mercy of some higher power:
Я думаю, что ты –
и то и это:
звезды, лица, предмета
в тебе черты.
Кто бы тот ювелир,
что, бровь не хмуря,
нанес в миниатюре
на них тот мир,
что сводит нас с ума,
берет нас в клещи,
где ты, как мысль о вещи,
мы – вещь сама?
I think that you/ are this and that:/ in you there are the outlines of a star, a face and
an object./ Who was the jeweller/ who, without creasing his brow,/ applied in mini-
ature/ on to them that world,/ who drives us mad,/ who takes us into his tweezers,/
where you are like the thought of things/ and we ourselves are things?
The butterfly is an enigma: its beauty is inexplicable since it lives

for such a brief time, too short for us to appreciate it. What is more, it
provides no answers to the questions its existence raises: unlike God’s
other creatures, it cannot communicate through language. In section
VIII, a crucial relationship is established between time and language: the
gift of communication is defined as a voice ‘dlya obshchen'ya, pen'ya:/
prodlen'ya minuty dnya’ (for communicating, singing:/ the extension
of a moment, a minute, a day). Brodsky does not justify or explain this
definition, which seems to rest more on the rhyme between the words
than on their sense. It belongs to his stock of such aphorisms about lan-
guage, often in conjunction with time, that serve in some ways to mystify
290 Chapter 6
the concept, but also lend it plasticity and depth. One could argue that
such conceptually challenging assertions are in fact ungrounded, and
therefore undermine his work; yet in fact, such assertions, and the twist-
ing lines of argument that accompany them, are fundamentally creative.
They do not stand up to scrutiny as philosophical positions, but they do
return imaginatively to investigate the nature, power, and significance
of language.
In stanza IX, a relationship is forged between the butterfly and lan-
guage. Its dumbness is a blessing, in contrast with the burden of language
and time that others, including the poet, must bear:
звук – тоже бремя.

Бесплотнее, чем время,
беззвучней ты.
sound is also a burden./ You are more incorporeal and more soundless than time.
Again, rhyme seems to be an important way of establishing the con-

nection between the two ideas here. The similarity of the words ‘vremya’
(time) and ‘bremya’ (burden) bridges the gap between the ideas more
directly and immediately than any analogy or explanation could. By yoking
together these ideas, Brodsky has also now formed an analogy between
the concrete observations of the butterfly and the abstract ideas of time
and language. The conceit of the butterfly has come to represent a fleet-
ing moment in time and the absence of sound; the poem can move on to
examine poetry’s position in time.
Just as rhyme can forge a connection between distinct concepts, in
stanzas X and XI, similar images create a connection between the butter-
fly’s flight and the movement of a pen across the page. Since the butterfly
resembles the pen in movement, Brodsky concludes that the pen, like the
butterfly, exists only in the present and has no sense of the trail that it
leaves behind on the page as it is moved by the fingers of the hand bearing
silent speech:
Iosif Brodsky 291
Так делает перо,

скользя по глади
расчерченной тетради
не зная про
судьбу своей строки,
где мудрость, ересь
смешались, но доверясь
толчкам руки,
в чьих пальцах бьется речь
вполне немая,
не пыль с цветка снимая
но тяжесть с плеч.
Thus moves the pen, slipping over the surface of a book not knowing the fate of its
line in which wisdom and heresy have mixed, but trusting the movements of the
hand in whose fingers mute speech throbs, which removes not pollen from flowers
but weight from shoulders.
What the pen and the butterfly share in common is the shape of their
movement and the fact that they trace a representation of the passing
of time. Yet there is also a difference between them: for while the pen’s
movement leaves behind a poem on the page, the butterfly’s flight leaves
no such trace. Its great beauty combined with such transience is seen, in
stanza XII, as the ultimate evidence that either the world has no meaning,
or its meaning was not created for us: the entomologist can pin the dead
butterfly, but he cannot preserve the pattern of light and shade that was
created by its flight. What has been lost and cannot be recovered comes
to be represented by the butterfly.
In the light of this argument, in stanza XIII the poem returns again
to the questioning that the poem began with:
292 Chapter 6
Сказать тебе «Прощай»

как форме суток?
Есть люди, чей рассудок
стрижет лишай
забвенья; но взгляни:
тому виною
лишь то, что за спиною
у них не дни
с постелью на двоих,
не сны дремучи,
не прошлое – но тучи
сестер твоих!
Should I bid you ‘Farewell’ as I would the day? There are people whose reason is
etched away by the shingles of forgetting; but look: the problem is then that behind
them they don’t have days, with double beds and deep sleep, a past – instead they
have clouds of your sisters!
The butterfly, as he has come to understand it, represents not memories

of our past lives – for these would be the traces of time that has passed –
but the absences that take their place when memory fails. It is an image of
time emptied of memory: in other words, nothing. In the closing stanza,
earlier descriptions of the butterfly are drawn together into a conclusion
about what it really represents. Without language, time, memory or per-
manence, the butterfly in flight is perhaps the closest that we can ever get
to a glimpse of nothing, and it is very beautiful. Brodsky has returned to
the paradox that words can never express this elusive concept, yet he finds
in his conceit the possibility of approaching its image and essence. It is, he
eventually concludes, the ‘insubstantial boundary’ between himself and
the abstract idea of Nothing.
The tone in ‘Babochka’ might be described as wistful, even plaintive,
as it charts the butterfly’s brief existence and reflects on the passing of
time and the loss that accompanies it. At another level, however, and in
the tradition of the employment of a metaphysical conceit and its multi-
valent significance, Brodsky is playful in his exploration of ideas. At the
close of the poem it becomes apparent that his difficulty in defining the
Iosif Brodsky 293
butterfly is akin to his attempt to overcome the logical fallacy of the expres-
sion of nothing. Like many poems, ‘Babochka’ seems to argue rationally,
yet proceeds by play on words, links through rhyme, and echoes of visual
images and patterns. Its twisting arguments are poetic sleights of hand in
the guise of rational thinking that seek to make language express what is
conventionally deemed impossible.
‘Babochka’ was begun in the USSR, but completed later in the USA:
its composition spans a crucial stage in Brodsky’s life and work, when he
took on a new country and also language. When he arrived in the US he
did not immediately resume writing, and when he did, he did not return to
this poem immediately, but tackled the subject of his exile and life in a new
and strange society. It is striking that the poems ‘V ozernom krayu’ (‘In the
lake district’) and ‘Osennii vecher v skromnom gorodke’ (‘Autumn evening
in a small town’), two of his earliest American poems, do not employ the
hallmark convoluted reasoning that creatively extend his ideas. Unlike in
‘Babochka’, there are no logic-defying connections or conclusions: in fact,
the poems are very much limited to the description of everyday life in a
mundane town. This relatively staid language apparently reflects Brodsky’s
own sense of being constrained, limited, and uninspired in an alien country
and language. It was not long, however, before he returned to the exposi-
tory style and complex arguments that offer him a way of thinking beyond
the limitations of the material world. ‘1972 god’ (‘The year 1972’) is a poem
that describes an apparently new-found determination to go on writing in
the USA, despite his ageing and the deterioration of his faculties (at the age
of thirty-two, Brodsky’s physical appearance and health had deteriorated
beyond his years). Its fusion of abstract and concrete ideas includes the
image of the horizon line as a blade that slices the past away as you cross
it. In expressing his difficulty in coming to terms with emigration, he uses
paradox: his poem is a cry of silence, and his loss akin to taking salt from
something bland, or wine from someone sober.
Brodsky’s formulations and arguments often make grand, aphoristic
assertions and draw sweeping conclusions. They imply there is structure in
the world and that it is ordered by rules. His parallel images and frequent
similes create connections that imply reflections and resonances between
disparate objects and actions. At some level, his extended argumentation
294 Chapter 6
seems to be a way of imposing – or creating – order and meaning. There is

always the paradoxical sense, however, that this order rests on the manip-
ulation of language and not on the firm basis of logic: in poems such as
‘24 dekabrya 1971 goda’, ‘Pokhorony Bobo’, and ‘Babochka’, convoluted
argumentation reaches conclusions that rest on little more than visual
and verbal tricks. This means that these poems prioritise the individual’s
creative use of language over evidence and disciplined reason. They assert
strongly the individual’s prerogative – indeed, it seems to be his imperative
– to interrogative, manipulate and creatively make sense of the world, and
to prioritise his inner, independent understanding over widely-accepted
or at least officially-publicised versions of events. It seems likely that there
is a connection between this impulse in his poetry and his formative years
spent under Soviet power.
A Voice of Reticence
The language of expository prose lends the poems an intellectual, some-

what detached tone, which is often an effective idiom for Brodsky’s wry
and ironic observations about power, fate, and history. Pithy formulations
abound, such as the lines from sonnet XII to Mary Stuart:
Что делает Историю? – Тела.

Искусство? – Обезглавленное тело.
What makes History? – Bodies./ And Art? –A headless torso.
This kind of wit, again reminiscent of the English metaphysicals, enables

the lyric ‘I’ to maintain a distance from the poems’ subjects. Yet such apho-
risms sometimes express more than a witty observation. In the 1974 poem
‘Peschanye kholmy, porosshie sosnoi’ (‘Sandy hills covered with pine trees’),
Brodsky describes the Northern region near the Finnish-Russian border
and not far from his native St Petersburg:
Iosif Brodsky 295
И глаз, привыкший к уменьшенью тел

на расстоянии, иной предел
здесь обретает – где вообще о теле
речь не заходит, где утрат не жаль:
затем, что большую предполагает даль
потеря из виду, чем вид потери.
And the eye, used to bodies diminishing/ in the distance, discovers here another
boundary – where a body/ is not a subject for discussion at all, where no one regrets
a loss:/ since losing something from view offers a greater perspective than the view
of a loss.
The indifference to the individual, which Brodsky implies is inherent in

this landscape, cannot fail to resonate with his own sense of absence from
this place. Rather than address directly his own predicament, however, he
speaks in generalities. His poems rarely makes direct reference to emotions,
yet this absence has a pathos of its own: moments when Brodsky resorts to
the generalisations of a law or natural process are often elegiac, since they
alert us to the existence of emotions that he does not quite put into words.
The key moment at the close of this poem is the inversion of the descrip-
tion of the landscape. The loss of a view is transformed into the view of a
loss, and the poem shifts suddenly from external observation to an inner
preoccupation. This kind of inversion is a favourite technique of Brodsky’s,
which he used in earlier poems as well, such as ‘Ostanovka v pustyne’: at
the close of that poem, the chaos of proportions in the demolished church
leads to a consideration of the proportions of chaos.
A similar connection between the outside world and the poet’s inner
thoughts is sometimes achieved by merging distinct images. In Brodsky’s
poems we often find associations established between images through the
similarity in their form, such as the visual echo of a butterfly in the move-
ment of the pen in ‘Babochka’. In the final section of ‘Temza v Chelsi’
(‘The Thames at Chelsea’), there are resemblances between the dial of a
telephone and the disc-shaped moon, and between the figure composed
of telephone numbers and the constellation of stars:
296 Chapter 6
Город Лондон прекрасен. Если не ввысь, то вширь

он раскинулся вниз по реке как нельзя безбрежней.
И когда в нем спишь, номера телефонов прежней
и текушей жизни, слившись, дают цифирь
астрономической масти. И палец, вращая диск
зимней луны, обретает бесцветный писк
«занято»; и этот звук во много
раз неизбежней, чем голос Бога.
The city of London is splendid. If not upwards then outwards/ it has stretched
down along the river as boundlessly as it could./ And when you sleep there, the tel-
ephone numbers of your past/ and present life, combined, produce a figure/ of an
astronomical type. And your finger, turning the disk/ of the winter moon, discov-
ers the colourless beep/ ‘engaged’; and this sound is many more times unavoidable
than the voice of God.
These compound images link the vast loneliness of the night sky with the
individual’s solitude in a foreign city, and gesture towards his emotions
without directly naming them. They achieve an emotional restraint, evok-
ing yet not stating what is felt; this is the key to Brodsky’s skill in the use
of suggestion, implication and pathos in his work.
One poem that relies heavily on the resemblance between images to
introduce ideas is ‘Laguna’ (‘Lagoon’), one of Brodsky’s Christmas poems,
and one of the many ‘travel’ poems written during Brodsky’s exile period.8
It describes the city of Venice as seen through the eyes of a person without
history or identity: a ‘complete nobody, a man in a raincoat’ who has lost
his memory. This figure claims to be bereft of his past, yet in the details that
he observes and the associations that certain images conjure, there emerges
the outline of an existence anterior to the one described in the poem. In
fact, despite his claim in stanza two that he is losing his memory, homeland,
and son, there are indications that the first two of these are in some sense
8 Petr Vail', ‘Prostranstvo kak metafora vremeni: stikhi Iosifa Brodskogo v zhanre
puteshestviya’ Russian Literature XXXVII (1995) 405–16.
Iosif Brodsky 297
rediscovered and revisited in and through the Italian city, which bears so
much resemblance to his native St Petersburg.
Throughout the poem there is the pervasive presence of water. Aquatic
similes and imagery both characterise and transform the world that the
poet describes: the guesthouse ‘Accademia’, where he is staying, is described
as a ship with someone else at the wheel (stanza I); the chandelier in his
rented room resembles an octopus (stanza III), and time itself emerges from
the water in a parody of the birth of Aphrodite (stanza VI). The sight of a
gondola rocking on a canal brings to mind a cradle, and at the head of the
bed, in place of the ox in the Christmas stable, the poet imagines a fish.
Thus, the familiar Christmas scene, like everything else, is imbued with
the pervasive damp of Venice. Such alterations in his perception remind
us that this observer brings an unfamiliar gaze to Italy. In a departure from
the complexity of many metaphors in the poem, in stanza VI he reminds
us, simply, how different Christmas looks in this foreign place:
Рождество без снега, шаров и ели,

у моря …
Christmas without snow, baubles or fir trees,/ by the sea …
The first half of the poem is full of changes and transformations: the
tide comes in, fills the canals, and the boats begin rocking; the shapes
of objects suggest other images and associations, such as the chandelier-
octopus. In stanza III, the shape of Venetian churches are compared to a tea
service, shifting the poem from outside, in the city, to inside the guesthouse.
From the tea service, the gaze shifts to the box that holds not the crockery,
but the incidental lives of those who pass through the room:
Венецийских церквей, как сервизов чайных,

слышен звон в коробке из-под слуайных
жизней.
In the box that has held random lives you can hear the bells of the Venetian churches,
like tea services.
298 Chapter 6
This succession of images, so characteristic of Brodsky’s poetry, describes a

familiar trajectory of thoughts: the focus passes quickly from the exterior
of Venice to the interior emptiness of the persona’s life. This shift is mir-
rored in stanza VII when ‘tverdyi razum’ (hard reason) rhymes with the
‘mokrym glazom’ (damp eye) that it quickly gives way to. The images of
Venice direct his wandering, shifting thoughts towards memories of the
USSR he has left behind: in stanza VII, the sphinxes of Venice recall those
on the embankment of the Neva in St Petersburg, and in stanza VIII, the
rotten mooring of a quay leads to an extended meditation on the USSR:
VIII
Гондолу бьет о гнилые сваи.
Звук отрицает себя, слова, и
слух; а также державу ту,
где руки тянутся хвойным лесом
перед мелким, но хищным бесом
и слюну леденит во рту.
IX
Скрестим же с левой, вобравшей когти,
правую лапу, согнувши в локте;
жест получим, похожий на
молот в серпе, – и, как чорт Солохе,
храбро покажем его эпохе,
принявшей образ дурного сна.
VIII The gondola beats against the rotten mooring./ Sound negates itself, words,
and/ hearing; and also this power,/ where hands reach out like a forest of firs/ before
a petty but predatory demon/ and saliva freezes in your mouth.// IX With the left
hand, hiding its claws, we cross/ the right hand that’s bent at the elbow;/ the shape
you create looks like/ the hammer in the sickle, and like the Devil to Solokha,/ we
show it boldly to our epoch/ that has taken on the image of a bad dream.
The repetitive sound of the boat beating against its moorings transports
the persona to the past; an image resembling the hammer and sickle (as
well as an obscene gesture) does the same, and fills him with the sense that
Iosif Brodsky 299
the age he lives in is a bad dream. This double focus of the poem that is
emerging – of Venice but also of St Petersburg, the ‘Venice of the North’
– suggests that images in the first part of the poem shift and change in the
eyes of this ‘nobody’ because they are awakening memories and associa-
tions buried in his consciousness.
When in the following stanzas the poem returns to Venice, the descrip-
tions have strong undertones of Petersburg and Russia: in stanza X, there are
names that may refer to Italian statuary of the virtues, but are also Russian
women’s names; in stanza XI the width of the squares and the narrowness of
streets find similes in the words ‘farewell’ and ‘I love’ respectively, which are
associated with the distance between this exiled character and the people
and country he has left behind. Stanza XII lists architectural features of
Venice that all echo St Petersburg: spires, columns, carving, stucco, arches,
bridges and palaces. The statue of the lion is a specific detail that confirms
this is Venice, not St Petersburg, but in Brodsky’s peculiar vision the column
of St Mark’s Square is surrounded by a belt of time instead of a water chan-
nel. Again, although the poem seems to be about his geographical posi-
tion, in fact his position in Venice becomes a metaphor for his position in
time, which is to say his separation from the past. This representation of
time through space is one of Brodsky’s favourite metaphors, and one that
offers him great scope for constructing the kinds of complex arguments
and relationships that are such a feature of his poetry.
The closing stanzas of this poem return to the ‘man in a raincoat’, and
his description of his face, which is crumpled, and empty as a wedding ring
removed from its finger, resonates with a sense of loss and isolation:
Ночь на Сан Марко. Прохожий с мятым

лицом, сравнимым во тьме со снятым
с безымянного пальца кольцом, грызя
ноготь, смотрит, объят покоем,
в то «никуда», задержаться в коем
мысли можно, зрачку – нельзя.
300 Chapter 6
Night on Saint Mark’s Square. A passer-by with a crumpled face, that in the dark might
be compared to a ring taken off the fourth finger, biting a nail, looks, engulfed by the
peace, at that ‘nothing’ that a thought may rest in, but the eye can never rest upon.
The idea that a nobody is staring into nowhere is another example of

Brodsky’s use of paradoxical images; it adds a twisting of logic to the end
of the poem. It is curious that he makes such a distinction here between
thinking about nothing and seeing nothing, but the rationale for this is
perhaps to be found in the preponderance of visual images found in the
preceding stanzas of the poem. At the outset of the poem it was claimed
that the speaker had lost his memory, yet the subsequent stanzas reveal
how much the views of Venice remind him about Russia. It seems to sug-
gest that with the intrusion of familiar images, he can no longer sustain
his forgetfulness and is forced to remember his past.
In the final stanza Brodsky pursues his argument further, imagining
abstract places and states that exist at a metaphorical level only:
Там, за нигде, за его пределом

– черным, бесцветным, возможно, белым –
есть какая-то вещь, предмет.
Может быть, тело. В эпоху тренья
скорость света есть скорость зренья;
даже тогда, когжа света нет.
There, beyond nothing, beyond its boundary/ – black, colourless, perhaps white –/
there is some kind of thing, an object./ Perhaps it’s a body. In the era of friction/ the
speed of light is the speed of sight;/ even when there is no light.
If you can focus your thoughts to a point beyond nowhere, the poem seems
to suggest, you have moved beyond thinking – and remembering – and
have shed the burden of conscious thought. In place of being conscious
and aware of the past, Brodsky envisages a kind of inanimate serenity. After
all the changing and shifting, shot through with fluid images of water,
time, Russia, and Venice, this poem arrives at the desire to move beyond
this mutability and reach something static and inert. It seems to offer the
Iosif Brodsky 301
promise of some relief from the unavoidable memories of the past that
insistently intrude upon the present in this poem.
In ‘Laguna’, Brodsky approaches the subject of homesickness from a
oblique position. The images of Venice highlight the city’s strangeness, and
imply a contrast with another place more familiar, but the poem does not
make this explicit: this ‘man in a raincoat’ would rather lose his memory,
it seems, than ponder what he has lost. Once again, here the pathos of
Brodsky’s poem is found in its reticence, its reluctance to put feelings into
straightforward words; the poem seeks to avoid emotion by retreating into
complex and even paradoxical abstractions. The complexity of formula-
tions such as we find at the end of this poem belies the simplicity of the
emotions that they distract us from.
Individual and Empire
The subject of ‘Laguna’ is the life of an exile, displaced from home and cut
off from the past. While this is a key theme in the poems written in exile,
it did not appear in Brodsky’s work only after his move to the USA, but
grew out of an earlier preoccupation with the individual’s place in society:
exile from the USSR was a confirmation and reinforcement of a pre-existing
sense of isolation. As David Rigsbee has observed, the drama of Brodsky’s
poetry is not only of his exile, but, more broadly, ‘the drama of the twentieth-
century displaced person, homeless, contingent, but not without resources,
the most engaging of which is a full-blown Apollonian wit.’9
Wit and ingenious argument – exhilarating features of Brodsky’s work
that are testament to the individual’s creativity – are pitted against the
images and impressions of stagnation and decay that are associated with
the society and in particular the ‘Empire’ that Brodsky describes. This
9 David Rigsbee, Styles of Ruin: Joseph Brodsky and the postmodernist elegy (Westport:
Greenwood Press, 1999), p. 3.
302 Chapter 6
Empire appears in poems such as ‘Konets prekrasnoi epokhi’ (‘End of

beautiful era’) and ‘Post aetatem nostrum’, written before exile, as well as
those such as ‘Tors’ (‘Torso’), ‘Litovskii noktyurn’ (‘Lithuanian nocturne’),
and ‘Kolybel'naya treskovogo mysa’ (‘Lullaby of Cape Cod’) written in
the USA. ‘Tors’ (1972) provides a succinct introduction to the principal
features of this place:
Если вдруг забредаешь в каменную траву,

выглядящую в мраморе лучше, чем наяву,
или замечаешь фавна, предавшегося возне
с нимфой, и оба в бронзе счастливее, чем во сне,
можешь выпустить посох из натруженных рук:
ты в Империи друг.
Воздух, пламень, вода, фавны, наяды, львы,

взятые из природы или из головы, –
все, что придумал Бог и продолжать устал
мозг, превращено в камень или металл.
Это – конец вещей, это – в конце пути
зеркало, чтоб войти.
If suddenly you wander into stone grass,/ that looks better in marble than in reality,/
or you notice a faun who has abandoned himself to frolics/ with a nymph, and both
are happier in bronze than asleep,/ you can let that staff fall from your work-worn
hands:/ you are in the Empire, my friend.// The air, flame, water, fauns, naiads,
lions,/ taken from nature or from your head –/ everything that God imagined and
the brain was too tired to continue, turned into stone or metal./ This is the end of
things, it’s the mirror at the end of the road, where you enter.
The classicism that characterises this place is a style that Brodsky associ-
ates with completion and finality: it symbolises that there will be no more
progress or change here, only stagnation and decay. The poem is purely
descriptive, and this is significant: there is no argument or movement
because the Empire is ossified. The Empire appears in various guises in
Brodsky’s work, but the place and its tyrannical rulers are always treated
with irony or indifference.
Iosif Brodsky 303
Although the relationship between the individual poet and impersonal,

imperial power has a long history in Russian literature, the stagnation of
Brodsky’s Empire recalls specifically the USSR under Brezhnev. In this
respect, his work retains an anchor in the late years of the USSR during
which he was writing, even if he was living in the West from 1972 onwards.
Brezhnev’s USSR features specifically in the 1973 poem (re-edited for
publication in 1984) ‘Litovskii noktyurn’, which describes a fantastic night-
time flight that the poet makes from the new world – across oceans and
boundaries – to the figure of his poet friend Tomas Venclova in Lithuania,
and to the edge of the old Empire that he still calls home. The journey is
described in fairytale terms: the apparition of the travelling poet will disap-
pear, like Cinderella’s coach, at the sound of the cock’s crow. It is developed
through the poem into an extended metaphor for the communications and
connections made through language, and for poetry itself.
In his analysis of this work, Tomas Venclova has written about many
of the different threads of ideas that poem develops.10 As he observes, it
belongs to the tradition of encounters with poets in poems, and he identi-
fies Ovid and Pushkin as particularly important precursors in this regard.
It is also a meeting between the poet and the home that he had left behind.
Of course, Lithuania was not Brodsky’s home, but its situation on the
Baltic, in the USSR, and on a Northern latitude, together with the fact
that he had visited Lithuania many times, seems to be enough for Brodsky
to identify his destination as home. In its descriptions of Lithuania, the
poem draws upon two distinct aspects of the same place: Lithuania with
its own autonomous culture, language and history, and Lithuania that is
a part of the Soviet empire.
In section IV we get the first intimation of Empire with the ironic
comment of the first line ‘Izvini za vtorzhenie’ (Excuse the invasion): while
apparently an apology for the poet’s sudden intrusion upon Venclova, it
also reads, of course, as an apology for the invasions of Lithuania by Russia,
most recently in 1940 and 1944. The reference to a Manifesto in line 3
10 Tomas Venclova, ‘O stikhotvorenii Iosifa Brodskogo “Litovskii noktyurn: Tomasu

Ventslova”’ Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 33 (1988), 205–22.
304 Chapter 6
brings to mind the Communist Manifesto, and Venclova has pointed out
that the ghostly image of Brodsky in the poem is the ‘citation’ he refers to
here from the Manifesto’s opening paragraph in which ‘a spectre is haunt-
ing Europe’:
IV
Извини за вторженье.
Сочти появление за
возвращение цитаты в ряды «Манифеста»:
чуть картавей,
чуть выше октавой от странствий вдали.
Forgive the invasion./ Consider this appearance as/ the return of a citation to the
lines of the ‘Manifesto’:/ though with a speech burr,/ and a bit more than an octave
higher than wanderings afar.
Thus Brodsky introduces the spectre of the Soviet Empire and also of him-
self, recognisable by his burr (the inability to pronounce the letter ‘r’). This
is not a flattering detail to highlight, and is in keeping with his consistent
deflating and mocking self-portraits.
The identification of Lithuania with the Empire is strengthened by
the use of parallelism within the poem. The first lines of sections III and
V are almost identical, reading ‘Pozdnii vecher v Litve’ (Late evening in
Lithuania), and ‘Pozdnii vecher v Imperii’ (Late evening in the Empire)
respectively. Section III describes the evening in Lithuania with images of
the Catholic religion, rural life, and the Jews of the pre-war period, with
a Lithuanian regional place name, and the sights and smells of arable and
fishing traditions of the area:
Поздний вечер в Литве.

Из костелов бредут, хороня запятые
свечек в скобках ладоней. В продрогших дворах
куры роются клювами в жухлой дресве.
Над жнивьем Жемайтии
вьется снег, как небесных обителей прах.
Iosif Brodsky 305
Из раскрытых дверей
пахнет рыбой. Малец полуголый
и старуха в платке загоняют корову в сарай.
Запоздалый еврей
по брусчатке местечка гремит балоголой,
вожжи рвет
и кричит залихватски: «Герай!»
Late evening in Lithuania./ People wander away from the churches, protecting the
commas/ of candles in the parentheses of their hands. In the chilly yards/ the chick-
ens peck at the hardened grit./ Above the stubble-fields of Zhemaitia/ snow whirls
like the ashes of heavenly bodies./ From open doors/ the smell of fish wafts out. A
half-dressed child/ and an old woman in a shawl drive the cow into the barn./ An
old-fashioned Jew/ rumbles over the cobbles of the small town in a cart,/ yanks the
reins/ and gives a boisterous cry ‘Gerai’.
In the parallel section V, the descriptions contrast with these impressions

of the country. Although it ostensibly describes nightfall and the evening
activities of the town, the description is laden with images of aggression:
the trees attack with pikes and take Kaunas, the houses turn blood red,
and the cobbles resemble fish that have been caught. The characterisation
of Lithuania as a poor province also implies the dismissive attitude of the
centre of Empire towards its periphery:
Поздний вечер в Империи,

в нищей провинции.
Вброд
перешедшее Неман еловое войско,
ощетинившись пиками, Ковно в потемки берет.
Багровеет известка
трехэтажных домов, и булыжник мерцает, как
пойманный лещ.
Late evening in the Empire,/ in a poor province./ After fording the Neman an army
of fir trees,/ prickling with pikes, takes Kaunas in the darkness./ The lime wash
blushes red / on the three-storied houses and the cobblestones glimmer like/ a bream
caught in a net.
306 Chapter 6
Images of language appear in these scenes: in section III, cupped hands

are like parentheses and a candle flame resembles a comma, and in section
VI we find that, here in Lithuania, language exists only in a visual form.
Speech (rech'), meanwhile, feels its way like a blind man, groping for the
shape of words, not hearing their sound. The surveillance of the secret police
has silenced the poet, so that the sounds their microphones pick up in his
apartment have no words. In Lithuania, language and communication are
expressed stealthily, not through sound, but in images:
… Отменив рупора,
миру здесь о себе возвещают, на муравья
наступив ненароком, невнятной морзянкой
пульса, скрипом пера.
… having done away with the megaphone,/ here they announce themselves to the
world, after treading on ants by mistake, with the faint Morse code/ of a pulse, the
scratch of a pen.
The visual, written language that exists here is where the poets Brodsky and
Venclova are to be found. This conclusion is a part of a longer argument
that twists its way through the poem using connections that are, typically
for Brodsky, convoluted and logically challenging; although assertions
made in the poem appear straightforward, they in fact entail imaginative
associations made through visual images that are exciting, if sometimes
difficult to follow. In section VII he asserts that written language presents
images of the poets themselves and of their lives. A linear, written line of
poetry is an image of the unfolding of a life whose trajectory inevitably
leads to some kind of punctuation: a comma, full stop, a horizon, and by
implication, a destiny.
This extended metaphor, in which lives are lines of poetry, enables
Brodsky to transform the characters of his poem – his persona and Tomas
Venclova – into the poetry or ‘written language’ (pismennost' ) that they
share. In this metaphorical state, there is little that separates them, and
with a characteristic sleight of hand, Brodsky takes the two figures in his
poem and merges them into one: in section 1 the persona was described
Iosif Brodsky 307
looking in through a window, and in section 5 Venclova appeared on the

other side of a window. By section IX, after the metaphor of the poets as
their poetry, the image of a window separating them recurs, but now it
functions as a mirror. Brodsky pursues his argument to the point where
the poets are like a reflection of each other; then takes one final step to the
conclusion that they are essentially the same:
Мы похожи;
мы, в сущности, Томас, одно:
ты, коптящий окно изнутри, я, смотрящий снаружи.
We are similar;/ we, in essence, Tomas, are one:/ you, blowing smoke on the window
from inside and me looking in from the outside.
The image of the two poets is reinforced throughout the poem by its form;
Venclova has pointed out the shape of each section resembles a mirror
image of two faces looking at each other in profile: the two poets that
meet in the work.
The poets, then, are the same: one version exists in the Empire, one
outside; but Brodsky has now returned to his counterpart by crossing
boundaries and barriers that stand, like the window or the mirror, between
them. In the following stanzas, imagery of barriers includes the kinds that
are policed at international borders, natural boundaries such as the sea,
and even the small dam built by a beaver that creates a tear-drop-shaped
lake:
Витовт, бросивший меч и похеривший щит,

погружается в Балтику в поисках броду
к шведам. Впрочем, земля
и сама завершается молом, погнавшимся за,
как по плоским ступенькам по волнам
убежавшей свободой.
Усилья бобра
по постройке запруды венчает слеза,
расставаясь с проворным
ручейком серебра.
308 Chapter 6
Vytautas, who has thrown away his sword and abandoned his shield,/ wades into the
Baltic in search of a way/ to the Swedes. In fact, the earth/ itself ends in a pier that
catches up with/ the freedom that ran away along the wide steps of the waves./ The
efforts of a beaver/ in building its pool are crowned with a tear/ as it bids farewell
to the fast-flowing/ stream of silver.
Such boundaries and barriers are found in other of Brodsky’s works written
around this time. As in other poems, he plays here with the relationship
between a boundary in time, which separates the present from the past,
and one in space, which separates the New World from the Old. For him,
these boundaries intersected at the point of exile. This night-time journey
back to the Empire, therefore, is a metaphor for his crossing both. When
in the poem he meets face to face with Tomas Venclova, he sees in the
Lithuanian poet an image of himself in the past: a poet inside the Empire.
The apparently logical conclusion to the argument defies logic, of course,
and relies on Brodsky’s virtuoso manipulation of images and metaphors
to achieve this impossible meeting.
For Brodsky to come face to face with himself at the end of the journey
there has to be a substitution of space for time, which is also found in the
final image of Venice in ‘Laguna’, in which the water surrounding the city is
a boundary of time separating Brodsky from his past life in St Petersburg. In
this sense, ‘Litovskii noktyurn’ develops a continuing preoccupation with
these phenomena. In both poems, the poet feels a pull towards his past and
its location. In ‘Laguna’ images of St Petersburg loom through the buildings
and water of Venice as the poet observes the city; in ‘Litovskii noktyurn’
the poet’s spectral night-time visit to Lithuania has the semblance of a
fairytale or a dream. In each case, the strange coexistence of the past and
present is achieved through the poem’s contortions of reasoning: in other
words, rather than transcending barriers, these poems outwit them.
The phantasmagorical journey to Lithuania brings Brodsky back to
his past and his home, but the metaphor does not stop here: in the final
section, the nature of his spectre is revealed with another transformation
that adds a final stage to the argument. Venclova has pointed out that, in
section XIII, Brodsky makes another appearance in the poem, although he
is not mentioned by name. The section describes the night air, or ‘oxygen’,
Iosif Brodsky 309
as saturated with radio waves and interference, noise, news, music and
other sounds. This image of the radio waves in the night air seems to point
to the foreign radio stations broadcasting to the USSR such as The Voice
of America and the BBC World Service, which could usually be tuned in
better at night, and which broadcast Brodsky’s poems once he was in exile.
Like his spectral form in the poem, the sounds in the night air are free to
move in space across barriers that stand in the way of material things.
In the following section his presence in the air is developed further: now
Venclova’s thoughts of Brodsky create his spectral presence in Lithuania:
Призрак бродит по Каунасу. Он

суть твое прибавление к воздуху мысли
обо мне,
A spectre wanders around Kaunas. He is a thought about me that you add to the
air
The spectre of Brodsky is formed from air: it is in fact Venclova’s thoughts

about him in the air about Kaunas, which is to say that his absence, like
Bobo’s in the earlier poem, has been transformed into language. In stanza
XV, from the cacophony of sounds in the air, the sound of the poet is dis-
tinguished, recognisable by his burring voice: he is scattered in the air like
small type, or the ‘footprints of flies’. His presence in the air is free of the
boundaries of space and time, and so he embodies poetry that serves not
the muse of history, Clio, who presumably operates in linear time, but the
muse of poetry, Urania, who is ‘connected to the emptiness of the world, but
who overcomes that emptiness through the creative act.’11 He emphasises
that, in his poetry, he reserves the right to create the laws and constraints
that he operates within, and will not submit to the logic of linear time or
of geographical space.
Across the poem Brodsky’s presence changes its form and transmutes
into an extended metaphor. From a spectral image of himself, he is reduced
to a figment of Venclova’s thoughts. Then he is further reduced to the
11 Venclova, p. 216. (My translation.)

310 Chapter 6
language that will become, in his collection Chast' rechi (A part of speech),
a favourite refuge. In stanza XVI he describes his departure from Lithuania
at cock-crow – from things, places, people – that resonates with the image
of his exile and with the image of the soul’s flight from the body:
Скрепя
сердце, с хриплым «пора!»
отрывая себя от родных заболоченных вотчин,
что скрывать – от тебя!
от страницы, от букв,
от – сказать ли! – любви
звука к смыслу, бесплотности – к массе
и свободы – прости
и лица не криви –
к рабству, данному в мясе,
во плоти, на кости,
эта вещь воспаряет в чернильный ночной эмпирей
мимо дремлющих в нише
местиных ангелов:
выше
их и нетопырей.
Reluctantly,/ with a shrill ‘it’s time!’,/ tearing oneself from this native marshy home-
land,/ from – what do I have to conceal – from you!/ from the page, from letters,/
from – shall I say it! – from the love/ of a sound for a thought, of incorporeality for
mass/ and of freedom – forgive me,/ no need to wince – /for slavery that’s given in
meat/, in flesh, in bones,/ this thing soars into the inky night empyrean/ past a niche
of dozing/ local angels:/ above/ them and the bats.
These are all images of being set free from constraints and ties: the departure
from Lithuania is transformed from the fairytale flight at cock-crow to a
great release from the material and emotional ties that bind us to the mun-
dane world, and even from gravity itself. Having become a part of speech,
the poet is now released into the air as a sound that, like a ghost, consists
of air. The argument comes full circle here: the ghost of Brodsky that left
Iosif Brodsky 311
his body behind in the New World and travelled back to the Empire is in
fact the poem itself.
In these last stanzas, Brodsky makes connections between air, sound,
and the soul that are familiar from other works. He returns to the idea that
air is the form that language takes; here the key word ‘veshch'’ is used in the
paradoxical formulation that he finally reaches in the poem: ‘Vozdukh –
veshch' yazyka’ (Air is the thing of language). The image of the heavens as
a mass of language, of ‘vowel and consonant molecules’ is a vision of unfet-
tered and unlimited language and expression: a ‘paradise of the alphabet
and the trachea’. Brodsky’s final flourish comes in the form of the ironic
and palindromic wordplay ‘bezlikii likbez’ (the anonymous liquidation
of illiteracy), and underlines the free and playful spirit of language that
his poem celebrates.
The Limits of Language and Beyond
The Empire in ‘Litovskii noktyurn’ may be identifiable as the USSR, but

this is not its only incarnation. In the long poem ‘Kolybel'naya treskovogo
mysa’ (‘The lullaby of Cape Cod’), America is for the first time explicitly
characterised as the new Empire the poet has swapped for the old. This is
a long, sustained poem that has much to say about life in America and the
experience of exile. It is a lyrical meditation that covers many themes and
also variations on those themes, and is not dissimilar to ‘Litovskii nokty-
urn’ in this respect, but one of the strong sentiments in the poem is that,
while the new empire may have some differences from the USSR, it also
has many echoes and similarities. In part IV:
Ибо
перемена империи связана с взглядом за
море (затем что внутри нас рыба
дремлет), с фактом, что ваш пробор,
как при взгляде в упор
312 Chapter 6
в зеркало, влево сместился … С больной десной

и с изжогой, вызванной новой пищей.
С сильной матовой белизной
в мыслях – суть отраженьем писчей
гладкой бумаги. И здесь перо
рвется поведать про
сходство. Ибо у вас в руках

то же перо, что и прежде. В рощах
те же растения. В облаках
тот же гудящий бомбардировщик,
летящий неведомо что бомбить.
И сильно хочется пить.
For/ the change of empires is connected with a gaze across/ the sea (since inside us all
there is a fish/ that dreams), with the fact that your parting,/ like when you look at
yourself// in the mirror, has moved to the left … With aching gums/ and heartburn
brought on by different food./ With a strong matt white/ in your thoughts – that is
a reflection of a sheet/ of smooth writing paper. And here the pen/ rushes to write
about// things that are the same. For you have in your hands/ the same pen that you
had before. In the woods/ you find he same plants. In the clouds/ there’s same hum-
ming bomber/ flying off to bomb god knows what./ And I’m thirsting for a drink.
Here are resemblances between the New World and the Old and between
the speaker’s position before and after his exile. While the similarities
between the appearances of the two places are fundamentally superficial,
the revelation that our human condition is everywhere constant is more
profound. In section X, the images of the new Empire as static and without
perspective are familiar from other works and reinforce the sense that, even
after the great upheaval of exile, nothing has changed fundamentally:
Опуская веки, я вижу край

ткани и локоть в момент изгиба.
Местность, где я нахожусь, есть рай,
ибо рай – это место бессилья. Ибо
это одна из таких планет,
где перспективы нет.
Iosif Brodsky 313
Тронь своим пальцем конец пера,

угол стола: ты увидишь, это
вызовет боль. Там, где вещь остра,
там и находится рай предмета;
рай, достижимый при жизни лишь
тем, что вещь не продлишь.
Lowering my eyelids I see the edge/ of fabric and an elbow at the moment it bends./
The place I am in is paradise,/ because paradise is a place of powerlessness. For/ this
is one of those planets/ where there is no perspective.// Touch the tip of a pen with
your finger,/ the corner of a table: you’ll see that it/ causes pain. Where an object is
sharp/ you find the paradise of an object;/ the paradise that can be achieved in life
only/ because you cannot continue a thing.
The poet in ‘Konets prekrasnoi epokhi’ found his situation frustrating

because he saw the world around him as a dead-end. Now in exile, he finds
this situation again, even though he is living in a place that people term
‘paradise’. Rather than arguing that the USA is not paradise, he redefines
the word so that it encompasses his experience. Paradise, he argues, is an
end point, a place that you cannot move on from. In this sense, Cape Cod,
at the edge of the North American continent, is paradise and also just as
much an Empire as the marble statues and columns of Brodsky’s classical
poems: it is an end point with no continuation. Time, which is endless
and implies continuation is reduced to words describing numbers, which
disappear as soon as they are spoken.
From the emotional experience of exile, the poem distils an abstract
argument. The references to the pain caused by the sharpness of an object,
and the image of a solitary figure sitting motionless in darkness, suggest
obliquely that the journey to this point of exile has been painful; but
typically for Brodsky, although the poem is filled with hints of an emo-
tional subtext, this is never fully expressed. Instead, there is a character-
istic trajectory – through argument – towards abstraction: the position
of exile is again reduced to a position in time and space; the individual is
again compared with language and its freedom. In section XI, the image
of a person lying down is one of a body that cannot extend beyond its
limits. The words that are released from our mouths, by contrast, have no
314 Chapter 6
boundaries to confine them and extend upwards, as thoughts do, away from
the body and the world of objects and into the air. This image is closely
connected to the image of unfettered language at the end of ‘Litovskii
noktyurn’; language is different from us because while our bodies dictate
that we must exist in space, language consists only of air and belongs in
the realm of time.
Running as a thread through this poem, there is the story of Brodsky’s
emigration from the USSR to the USA, which he represents in the figure
of the cod who rises out of the sea and walks on to dry land. The cod’s
adoption of a new homeland is an extension in space, a crossing of linguis-
tic and geographical boundaries, and it resonates with the more abstract
ideas in this and other poems. In the final stanzas of the poem, Brodsky
contrasts the extension of space, in the form of movement into exile, with
the extension of time, a limitless concept we can only try to imagine. He
imagines our thoughts stretching out beyond space, to time, and ultimately
beyond time as well:
Спи. Земля не кругла. Она

просто длинна: бугорки, лощины.
А длинней земли – океан: волна
набегает порой, как на лоб морщины,
на песок. А земли и волны длинней
лишь вереница дней.
И ночей. А дальше – туман густой:

рай, где есть ангелы, ад, где черти.
Но длинней стократ вереницы той
мысли о жизни и мысли о смерти.
Этой последней длинней в сто раз
мысль о Ничто; но глаз
вряд ли проникнет туда, и сам

закрывается, чтобы увидеть вещи.
Iosif Brodsky 315
Sleep. The earth is not round. It is/ simply long: hillocks, hollows./ But longer than
the earth is the ocean: a wave/ sometimes gathers, like wrinkles on a forehead,/ on
the sand. But longer than the earth and the wave/ is the chain of days.// And nights.
And beyond is a thick mist:/ heaven, where there are angels, hell, where there are
devils./ But hundreds of times longer than that chain/ are the thoughts of life and
the thoughts of death./ And a hundred times longer than this last/ is the though
of Nothing; but the eye// is hardly likely to penetrate that far, and/ closes so that
it can see things.
He moves with ease from concrete objects to abstract ideas of length

and movement in time, formulating the question of how far an idea
‘stretches’, how ‘long’ it is. His argument follows a path of development
as it twists and turns to ascend a hierarchy of ideas familiar from other
poems: it begins with concrete subjects and moves upwards to abstract
concepts. Here we find that the summit of this hierarchy is Nothing, an
idea that in other poems Brodsky has already established as beyond the
possibilities of language. By implication, it appears that this is a hierarchy
of language: the poems ascend from concrete nouns to abstract ideas,
and are always reaching towards the limits of what language can express.
This ascent towards the most abstract expression that language might
achieve means that his poetry continually challenges the boundaries that
might appear to constrain language. This is the fundamental trajectory of
Brodsky’s poems during this period, and at the core of his ideas about the
project of writing poetry.
The poems of the period 1972–5 use complex metaphors that defy logic
and make creative leaps of imagination to refute what appears irrefutable.
Brodsky uses such arguments to prove that he is not limited imaginatively
by the boundaries he encountered in his life: physical ones that separated
him from home; linguistic ones separating him from people and culture in
his place of exile; and even the more profound and apparently inescapable
boundary at the end of our lives, death. The poem of 1975 ‘Osennii krik
yastreba’ (‘A hawk’s cry in autumn’) presents perhaps the most striking of
Brodsky’s metaphors for this impulse to expand, extend, and go beyond.
The poem’s hawk rises into the ether with a force of movement upwards
that seems to embody the striving to extend, to move beyond boundaries
and limitations that other poems describe in more abstract terms. The bird’s
316 Chapter 6
over-reaching flight upwards that takes it too high and leads to its conse-
quent death is reminiscent of the myth of Icarus. Brodsky does not make an
explicit allusion to it, but, nevertheless, the archetypal myth of overreaching
and failure is crucial to the poem’s representation of this journey.
The poem is, for Brodsky, unusually lyrical and narrative. Although
it is still characterised by complex syntax, it is not constructed as an argu-
ment and does not use his favoured language and metaphors of science or
geometry. The poem is full of detail and does not shift from the descrip-
tion of everyday objects to abstract ideas, as many of Brodsky’s poems do,
especially towards their denouements, but uses only concrete language
until the end. Here Brodsky does not use the language or structures of
expository prose; this is not an argument, but a narrative.
The sense of the hawk’s ascent is conveyed with visual imagery seen
from the height that the hawk has gained, at first with the details of the
landscape laid out below and growing smaller. These details of the land-
scape are not picked out by the hawk, however, for he pays no heed to the
churches visible below. In stanza 3 Brodsky describes how the local detail
of what is below is of no interest to him as he leaves the land behind:
Упавшие до нуля
термометры – словно лары в нише;
стынут, обуздывая пожар
листьев, шпили церквей. Но для
ястреба это не церкви. Выше
лучших помыслов прихожан
он парит в голубом океане …

Thermometers that have dropped to zero are like house-gods in their niches; they
freeze and constrain the bonfires of leaves and spires of churches. But for the hawk
there are no churches. Higher than the thoughts of any parishioner he soars in the
ocean of blue …
The bird is heading for the Rio Grande, where he has a memory of the nest,
siblings, and broken eggshells he once left behind. This, then, is a journey
back to an origin, home, and family, but also perhaps – given that eggshell
Iosif Brodsky 317
and nest will hardly be preserved – to the past. We have a sense at this stage
in the poem not only of the hawk’s ascent, but also of his being unaware
how far behind he has left the place he came from. The details in stanza 7
– faces, trees, a couple, and a woman on her porch – are things the bird is
exchanging, as he climbs higher, for the expanse of autumn blue sky. These
mundane images are full of movement; present participles emphasise that
the images are snapshots of lives in motion, time moving on:
увеличивая за счет
еле видного глазу коричневого пятна,

точки, скользящей поверх вершины
ели; за счет пустоты в лице
ребенка, замершего у окна,
пары, вышедшей из машины,
женшины на крыльце.
increasing at the expense of the brown speck hardly visible to the eye, the spot slip-
ping beyond the top of a fir tree; at the expense of emptiness in the face of a child
who has got cold standing at the window, a couple who have just got out of their
car, a woman on the porch.
The bird’s flight away from this everyday life in motion takes him
into the empty, frozen sky, where the forces of the air take over and he is
no longer in control. His struggle against the thermals is futile, and he is
destined then to suffocate from lack of oxygen as he moves into the iono-
sphere, the ‘heavens’. This expanse of sky is described in terms of layers that
the hawk rises through, and this sequence of layers is reminiscent of the
stages of an extended metaphor, or hierarchies of abstract ideas in other
poems. In stanza 6, the hawk begins in the ‘autumn blue’ of the sky, but
he moves through the colourless, frozen expanse (stanza 10), the iono-
sphere (stanza 11), to the zenith and finally the ultramarine (stanza 18). In
an analogy between Brodsky’s poetry and the hawk’s flight, the sky seems
to represent the abstract, schematic ideas that Brodsky’s poems often lead
into, away from the details and representation of everyday life.
318 Chapter 6
The hawk’s flight seems to mirror the trajectory of ideas in Brodsky’s

other poems, and of his poetic impulse to push language towards ever higher
expression. This particular metaphor for the poet’s writing underlines that
the process is not sure or guaranteed, since the bird loses control and is car-
ried away by the forces of the thermals rising below him. In this analogy of
writing poetry there is an admission that, while the surge upwards that is
the beginning of a new poem is exhilarating and exciting, there is a point at
which the poet no longer dictates the course of the poem. The endeavour
of writing poetry emerges as a journey that cannot be abandoned once it
is undertaken: once the poet sets out on the path of ideas and in search of
an answer, of his ‘nest’ or perhaps, more like Icarus, in quest of an elevated
knowledge, there is no turning back and the poem must proceed to its
logical and unavoidable end. Just as the bird has to relinquish control over
its flight, the poet relinquishes control over his poem and submits himself
to the force of ideas that earlier he enjoyed and relished. The flight into
the frozen sky and the cry he lets out at its apotheosis is an analogy of a
poetical process that ends with the effacement of the poet.
There is an extended characterisation of the hawk’s cry that runs over
stanzas 13, 14 and 15. The cry of the hawk expresses the bird’s bitter realisa-
tion that he cannot save himself from his flight and must perish:
Не мозжечком, но в мешочках легких

он догадывается: не спастись.
И тогда он кричит. Из согнутого, как крюк,

клюва, похожий на визг эриний,
вырывается и летит вовне
механический, нестерпимый звук,
звук стали, впившейся в алюминий;
механический, ибо не
предназначенный ни для чьих ушей:

людских, срывающейся с березы
белки, тявкающей лисы,
маленьких полевых мышей;
Iosif Brodsky 319
It’s not with his brain, but in his the cavities of his lungs that he realises: he cannot
survive. And then he cries. From his beak that is curved like a hook, the escapes,
flies out a mechanical, intolerable sound, like the screech of the Erinyes, the sound
of steel scraping against aluminium, mechanical because it is not designed for any-
one’s ears: those of people, or of a squirrel jumping from a birch tree, a barking fox,
or the little field mice;
The cry is ‘mechanical’, a noise like the one made when steel scrapes against
aluminium. It is emitted instinctively and, since it is not intended for a
particular audience, it is not going to inspire pity or remorse in anyone. The
sound does not resemble conventional ideas about poetry as artifice, nor
as a representation designed to move an audience to emotion. It is a grat-
ing, piercing, unpleasant sound, which is seen and felt as well as heard: as
though the intensity of its momentary existence explodes into something
visible, audible and tangible. The earth seems to shudder at its sound; the
warmth of the hawk’s body burns the frozen sky; and the cry and warmth
of the hawk in the sky are seen from below as a shining pearl, and heard as
the breaking of china or the family crystal. Devoid of beauty and design,
this sound represents poetry as a pure response, a realisation that has no
artifice or affectation about it. This image of poetry is also an intensely
private drama. The people below have no sense of the hawk’s sacrifice, they
only observe this event from a distance, and see the flakes of snow-like
feathers, colours, and parts of speech that float down to earth.
Loseff has discussed how Brodsky’s construction of his poetic ‘I’
shifted, in the 1970s, towards the construction of the poet as ‘other’:
Towards the middle of the 1970s … he develops a strategy for the construction of
the lyric ‘I’ that is unusual in the poetry of all countries and epochs – the description
of the self as another. ‘A complete nobody’, ‘the man/body in a Mac’, makes his debut
in ‘Laguna’ (1973), after which there are several poems where ‘I’ is represented in an
isolated, personal space that is cut off from the world of people – more often than
not at the table of a café, in an impersonal hotel, or on a bench in a city park, but
even including the hawk in the stratosphere.12
12 Loseff, Iosif Brodsky, p. 118.

320 Chapter 6
Beyond these images of a nobody there is also, as we have seen, Brodsky’s

desire to reduce himself to a disembodied part of speech. In this poem,
the hawk is an image of the poet and poetry that has less pathos than the
‘I’ of the early American poems of 1972 and ‘Laguna’, but is more personal
than some more abstract poems. The hawk’s plight is one with which the
reader can empathise, but the bird is not anthropomorphised to such a
degree that its situation is elevated to tragedy. Its last screech in the sky is
not a heroic act, but a natural, instinctive response to its realisation that
it has become trapped. With the figure of the bird, Brodsky finds a repre-
sentation of himself that can inspire pathos, but which is not burdened or
complicated with a sense of itself and its own destiny.
While Brodsky’s ‘Osennii krik yastreba’ presents an image of poetry
which does not ennoble or aggrandize the figure of the poet, the hawk’s
flight does reveal there is sacrifice and pain behind poetry, since it portrays
the beauty of poetry as arising from the moment of the hawk’s realisation
of its mortality. It suggests that poets set out to reach the highest levels of
expression in language, but must inevitably discover the limitations of what
they can achieve. The bright light that the hawk creates in the sky and its
cry are not the ideal beauty of language that the poet hoped to reach, but
the poignant beauty that is created by sacrifice and disappointment. Even
this beauty, however, does not guarantee that the sacrifice will be recognised
and rewarded. When children shriek their excitement about the feathers
they mistake for snow – and do so in English – we are reminded that, for
Brodsky in exile, there was no guarantee of a receptive readership for his
Russian-language poetry. The children’s response is a poignant metaphor
for an enthusiastic but uncomprehending reception of a poet in exile:
И на мгновенье
вновь различаешь кружки, глазки,
веер, радужное пятно,
многоточия, скобки, звенья,
колоски, волоски –
Iosif Brodsky 321
бывший привольный узор пера,

карту, ставшую горстью юрких
хлопьев, летящих на склон холма.
И, ловя их пальцами, детвора
выбегает на улицу в пестрых куртках
и кричит по-английски: «Зима, зима!».
And for a moment/ once more you see the circles, eyelets,/ fan, rainbow,/ suspension
points, parentheses, ringing,/ ears of wheat, threads –// the former, free pattern of
a feather,/ the map that became a handful of fluttering/ flakes flying down to the
hillside./ And, catching them in their fingers, the children/ run out on to the street
in bright-coloured coats/ and shriek in English ‘Winter, winter!’.
In contrast to other poems, in which there is a sense that the poet possesses
a boundless freedom in his creativity and imagination, this closing image
speaks of the limitations of the poet and his work. The language remains
concrete in this poem; it does not move into abstraction and argument
as it does in other works, which means that here we do not have the sense
that through language anything can be accomplished or overcome. Like
‘Litovskii noktyurn’ and, in some ways, ‘Laguna’, this poem is about a
journey home; this time, however, there is no wordy argument to enable
the poet to transcend obstacles and boundaries. When the hawk cries as
it perishes in the ether, its sound expresses the isolation of the individual
which lies at the heart of and ultimately shapes Brodsky’s work.
Conclusions
Leningrad poetry flourished during the Thaw period, with a number of

outstanding individuals among the poets who appeared in the city at this
time. Most poets had significant connections with the officially-sponsored
forums for poetry that were fostered by the authorities in the 1950s and
1960s, and while it is impossible to determine how far this institutional
support helped bring about the poetry movement in Leningrad during
the Thaw, nevertheless it is important to consider the role that it played
in its creation. While the political Thaw after the death of Stalin provided
optimism and impetus, the LITOs and literary seminars provided the
environment where these could be developed concretely in literature, and
a career structure that assured young people there was a future for them
as writers. More importantly, they formed an intellectual and relatively
free-thinking environment for young people who had been emboldened
by the Secret Speech. They brought old and young generations together,
enabling cultural values to be passed on to young people eager to connect
with tradition. The combination of people, politics, and circumstances
produced outstanding and, to some extent, unanticipated results.
Decisions and actions taken by the authorities in the later 1960s and
1970s had a significant, albeit negative influence on the younger generation
of poets that appeared in Leningrad after the Thaw. Again, it is difficult to
identify exactly how policy affected poets, but the attitudes of this group of
young people were significantly more disillusioned and cynical that those of
the molodaya literatura, and it may be that the lack of institutional support
for them helped create this difference. A more difficult but no less impor-
tant question is whether and how official policy may have shaped the kind
of poetry that was written by the poets of these generations. The audience
and readership that they wrote for was to some extent determined by the
opportunities for public reading and publication, and therefore by policy
and control over literature. These questions are especially relevant in the
context of the USSR, an undemocratic and highly controlled society.
324 Conclusions
In the individual studies of poets, I have tried to explore the nuances

of the relationship between a poet’s work and his background and con-
text. From my history of this period, a picture emerges of how poets were
recognised and treated, and how they experienced Soviet official culture
and intellectual society; although this sense of culture that they acquired
in their youth may have found very different forms of expression in their
work, it is shared nonetheless. Such an approach to the Thaw poets points
to a way that Brodsky’s work can be understood not only in isolation, but
also in the context of his time and generation. While this will not radi-
cally change the readings of his work, it will make clearer what constitutes
innovation, for example his interest in Anglo-American poetry, and what
he shares with others, such as the sense of poetry as a vehicle for connecting
with literature and ideas outside the limited range of Soviet literature.
Common to the three poets I have chosen for this study is their recourse
to both major branches of Silver Age poetry: the ‘classical’ Acmeism and
experimental Futurism. Each developed prosody and language that are not
as radical as Khlebnikov’s, but not as conservative as Akhmatova’s. For them,
Tsvetaeva and Mandel'shtam appear to be of great importance, demonstrat-
ing that Moscow as well as Petersburg poetry was important to this genera-
tion. More widely, it suggests that these two figures dominated in the legacy
of the Silver Age – in Leningrad at least – and therefore in the development
of the form and vision of Leningrad poetry in the late twentieth century.
While only a preliminary step in the task of examining the Russian
poetry of this period, this study has established the importance of the insti-
tutional history of poetry, and through this history has drawn attention
to the many poets who have hitherto received little attention. With the
study of officially-published poetry that includes the significant figure of
Aleksandr Kushner, it has established the range of forms and themes that
were acceptable within Socialist Realism at the time; the close analysis
of three major poets who remained largely unpublished in the USSR, by
contrast, has introduced alongside the famous Brodsky two little-known
figures, and has placed all three in context. Altogether, the various parts
of this study have established some of the chief contours of a period that
will no doubt come to be recognised in literary history as another great
age of Russian poetry.
Appendix 1
Principal LITOs and Literary Groups in Leningrad

1953–1975
Name, Location Leader(s) Period of Members

if any, of activity
LITO
Club Palace of Nina 1937–present Mikhail Yasnov, Lyudmila
‘Derzanie’ Pioneers Knyazeva, Zubova, Viktor Toporov,
Aleksey Evgeny Venzel', Sergey
Admiral'sky, Stratanovsky, Viktor Krivulin,
Natal'ya Elena Shvarts, Elena Ignatova,
Grudinina, Tat'yana Kurochkina,
Irina Tat'yana Tsar'kova,
Malyarova Mark Maz'ya, Nikolay
Gol', Elena Pudovkina,
Natal'ya Abel'skaya, Polina
Bezprozvannaya, Elena
Dunaevskaya, Petr Cheigin,
Tamara Bukovskaya
Philological Evgeny Was running Mikhail Krasil'nikov, Yury
Faculty, Naumov, already in Mikhailov, Mikhail Eremin,
Leningrad Leonid the 1940s Leonid Vinogradov, Vadim
State Khaustov Nechaev, Reid Grachev,
University Aleksandr Sharymov, Lev
Lifshits (later Loseff ),
Sergey Kulle, Yakov Gordin,
Valentin Gorshkov, Il'ya
Fonyakov, Vladimir Uflyand,
Boris Gusev, Konstantin
Sorokin, Ol'ga Kolmyk
326 Appendix 1
‘Golos House of David Dar, 1951–1970s Viktor Sosnora, Igor' Efimov,

yunosti’ Culture A. El'yanov Marina Rachko, Viktor
of Labour Berlin, Galina Galakhova,
Reserves Gleb Gorbovsky, Slava
Gozias, Viktor Buzinov,
Yury Shigashov, Aleksey
Aleksandrov, Oleg Okhapkin,
Aleksey Emel'yanov, Natal'ya
Galkina, Aleksey Lyubegin
Forestry During Mark Vainshtein, Lyudmila
Elena Ryvina
Institute 1950s Agre
Mining Gleb Semenov 1954–8 Vladimir Britanishsky,
Institute Leonid Ageev, Aleksandr
Gorodnitsky, Oleg Tarutin,
Elena Kumpan, Lidiya
Gladkaya, Gleb Gorbovsky,
Viktor Sosnora, Aleksandr
Kushner, Nina Koroleva,
Sergey Davydov, Gennady
Trifonov, Lina Gol'dman,
Mikhail Sudo, Andrey Bitov,
Yakov Vin'kovetsky, Kutyrev,
Glozman, Dmitry Bobyshev,
Karachev, Kuchinsky, Shul'ts
Industrial Zelik Definitely Dmitry Bobyshev, Anatoly
Cooperative Shteinman, 1956–59, Naiman, Evgeny Rein, Viktor
House of Azarov possibly Sosnora, Il'ya Averbakh,
Culture longer David Shraer-Petrov,
Aleksandr Kushner, Vasily
Aksenov, Vasil'ev, Leonid
Vinogradov, Mikhail Eremin,
Sergey Vol'f
Library V. A. 1956– ? Yury Grekov, Boris Vail',
Institute Manuilov Nonna Slepakova, Igor'
Adamatsky, E. Kudryavtsev,
T. Pachevsky, A. Troitsky
Polytechnic Gleb 1950s and Viktor Berlin, Mark
Institute Semenov, 1960s Vainshtein, Lyudmila
Lev Mochalov Agre, Sergey Davydov, A.
Shteinburg
Principal LITOs and Literary Groups in Leningrad 1953–1975 327
‘Narvskaya Palace of N. Grudinina, Late Viktor Krivulin, Evgeny

zastava’ Pioneers Sel'vinsky, 1950s–1970s Pazukhin, Sokolov,
N. Koroleva Nikolay Rubtsov, Eduard
Shneiderman, Anatoly
Domashev, Irena Sergeeva,
Aleksandr Morev, Boris
Taigin
Optima Independent none 1960–2 Eduard Shneiderman, Kim
group Gorev, Leonid Mikhailov,
formed by M. Konosov, L. Lifshits (later
the evening Loseff ), G. Petrov,
course M. Frolova, Z. Sikevich,
students E. Velikovich, O. Zabokritska
at the
Philological
Faculty,
Leningrad
State
University
House of Gleb Semenov Beginning of Viktor Krivulin, Elena
Culture of 1960s Shvarts, Gleb Gorbovsky,
the First Aleksandr Kushner
Five-Year
Plan
(possibly at Nadezhda Unknown, Konstantin Kuz'minsky,
Construction Polyakova was running Molot, Klimov, Bezmenov,
House of in 1963 Golofast, Frolova, Mikhail
Culture, see Yupp, Edik Klever
below)
Tsarskoe Tat'yana Unknown, Boris Kupriyanov, Yury
selo, Gnedich was running Alekseev, Konstantin
institution in 1963 Kuz'minsky
not known
Central House of Gleb Semenov 1968–70 Viktor Krivulin, Sergey
LITO for Writers Stratanovsky, Aleksandr
poets Mironov, Boris Kupriyanov,
Elena Shvarts, Oleg
Okhapkin, Petr Cheigin
328 Appendix 1
At a meeting of the Secretariat in 1963, a list of Union members and the

LITOs they were running was given. I do not know how long these groups
ran, or who attended them. The list was as follows:
V. V. Azarov Vyborg House of Culture, and ‘Na strazhe rodiny’

N. Al'tovskaya Ordzhonikidze House of Culture
V. S. Bakinsky Central Library, and Vyborg House of Culture
V. S. Bakhtin Strel'na House of Culture
E. A. Vechtomova LITO in Vyborg, and the 10th Anniversary of
October House of Culture
N. I. Grudinina ‘Svetlana’ Factory
N. N. Kutov Kirov House of Culture
L. V. Kuklin Mining Institute
P. G. Kobrakov House of Culture in Slantsy
D. A. Levonevsky ‘Skorokhod’ at the Kolpinskii House of Culture
Yu. I. Loginov Communications House of Culture
I. L. Mikhailov Gorky House of Culture
M. M. Mar'enkov Gorky House of Culture
P. N. Oifa Nevsky House of Culture
O. K. Ostrov ‘Na strazhe rodiny’
N. M. Polyakova Construction House of Culture
A. N. Sorokin Volodarsky Factory
M. L. Sazonov Kirov Factory
L. I. Khaustov Red October House of Culture
A. El'yanov Labour Reserves House of Culture (Golos yunosti,
see above)
E. I. Ryvina First Five-Year Plan House of Culture
V. A. Rozhdestvensky LITO at journal Neva
A. A. Khrzhanovsky House of Children’s Books
A. Ya. Kuchanovsky House of Children’s Books
Z. Ya. Shteinman ‘Red Banner’ Factory
N. Koroleva Institute of Precision and Optical Technology
Appendix 2
Unofficial Groups of Poets in Leningrad 1953–1975
Group Dates Members

(approximate)
‘Boltaika’ Early 1950s Roal'd Mandel'shtam, Vasily Betaki (?)
(writers), and Aleksandr Aref 'ev, Vadim
Prelovsky, Rodion Gudzenko (graphic artists)
Friends at university 1954–1960s Lev Lifshits (later Loseff ), Sergey Kulle,
often referred to as the Leonid Vinogradov, Mikhail Eremin, Vladimir
‘Philological School’ Uflyand, Aleksandr Kondratov, Mikhail
Krasil'nikov, Yury Mikhailov, Aleksey Tsvetkov
(artist)
Aleksey Khvostenko’s 1956–? Aleksandr Al'tshuller, Leonid Entin, Leonid
group Aronzon, Shveigol'ts, Igor' Mel'ts, Yury Sorokin
Leonid Aronzon and Began in 1950s Aleksandr Al'tshuller, Yury Galetsky, Boris
his group Ponizovsky, Aleksandr Mironov
Protégés of Lidiya 1959–1964? Aleksandr Kushner, Gleb Gorbovsky, Maya
Ginzburg Danini, Sergey Vol'f, Andrey Bitov, Reid
Grachev
Akhmatova’s ‘Magic 1960–4 Evgeny Rein, Dmitry Bobyshev, Anatoly
Choir’, later known as Naiman, Iosif Brodsky
‘Akhmatova’s Orphans’
Anri Volokhonsky and Unknown, Anri Volokhonsky, Aleksey Khvostenko, Ivan
his group during 1960s Steblin-Kamensky, Lev Vasil'ev
‘Malaya Sadovaya Poets’, 1965–? Tamara Bukovskaya (Kozlova), Andrey
or ‘Library Poets’ Gaivoronsky, Vladimir Erl', Aleksandr
Mironov, Evgeny Venzel', Nikolay Nikolaev,
Roman Belousov, Evgeny Zvyagin, Dmitry
Makrinov, Oleg Niverozhkin, Boris Arakcheev,
Petr Brandt
330 Appendix 2
‘Khelenukts’ 1965–1970/1 Vladimir Erl', VNE (Viktor Nemitinov), Dm.

M. (Dmitry Makrinov), Aleksandr Prokof 'ev,
Aleksandr Mironov, NF (Natal'ya Fedyuchek),
Sergey Dorofeev, Aleksey Khvostenko
(KHVOST)
‘Shkola konkretnoi 1967–70 Tamara Bukovskaya, V. Krivosheev, Viktor
poezii’ Krivulin, Viktor Shirali
Salon at Kuz'minsky’s Late 1960s and Yury Alekseev, Viktor Krivulin, Boris
flat 1970s Kupriyanov, Aleksandr Ozhiganov, Oleg
Okhapkin, Petr Cheigin, Viktor Shirali.
Appendix 3
Statistics Concerning the Admission of Poets to the

Leningrad Writers’ Union 1953–1975
Year Names Names Accepted, (dates Names who Total no. of

Recommended of birth, where known, failed to secure new poets
by Admissions given in parentheses) recommendation accepted
Committee (r) or acceptance (excluding
(a) rehabilitated
members)
1953 Novoselov, Kutov (k), Vikulov (k) 2
Dem'yanov (k),
Kutov (1907),
Vikulov
1954 Bukin (r) 0
1955 0
1956 Sazonov (1912), Stekol'nikov, Merzon 4, plus 7
Gneushev (1927), (k), Kuznetsov, Alekseev kandidaty
Toropygin (1928), (1925), Gneushev (1929),
Kuznetsov (1932), Dem'yanov (k), Gleizarov
Polyakova*, (k), Fogel'son (k), Kutov
Shestinsky, Alekseev (k), Oifa (k), Vikulov (k)
(1925), Davydov (k)
1957 N. M. Oleinikov Raevsky(r) 1
(posthumous), B. K. V. Maksimov (r)
Lifshits (posthumous), B.
Kornilov (posthumous),
Davydov (k)
1958 Nekrasov, Gnedich Gnedich (translator, 0
(translator). rehabilitated)
332 Appendix 3
1959 Shoshin, Mochalov Kleshchenko (1921), Mikhailov (r), 3

(1928), Kleshchenko Infant'ev (1921), Mochalov Al'tovskaya (r),
(1921), Infant'ev (1928) Chistyakov (r),
(1921) Kobrakov (r)
1960 NO INFORMATION Akvilev (1923), Davydov, 5
Mikhailov (1913),
Poperechny (1934)
Shushin (1930)
1961 NO INFORMATION Kobrakov (1921), Kuklin Shestalov (1937) 2
(1931) (a)
1962 NO INFORMATION Gavrilov (1931), Shestalov 2
(1937, n.b. Mansi poet)
1963 NO INFORMATION Gorbovsky (1931), 6
Grigor'ev (1923), Sosnora
(1936), Dubrovina
(1923), Yakorskaya (1925),
Novoselov (1921)
1964 NO INFORMATION Nikitina (1929), Druskin 3
(1921), Sokolov (1908)
1965 NO INFORMATION Ageev, Kushner (1936), 2
Bitov (prose writer)
1966 NO INFORMATION Bernovich, Koroleva 3
(1933), Krasnov (1932)
1967 NO INFORMATION No poets. Prose writers 0
Maya Danini and Reid
Grachev (1935) accepted
1968 NO INFORMATION Tarutin (1935) Malyarova, 3
Slepakova (1936)
1969 NO INFORMATION Betaki (1930) (as poet and Naiman (a) as 2
translator), Khalupovich translator
1970 NO INFORMATION 0
1971 NO INFORMATION Gamper, Evstifeev, Kyzhov 3
1972 NO INFORMATION Al'tovskaya, Gorodnitsky Malyshev (a) 2
(1933)
1973 NO INFORMATION Galushko 1
1974 NO INFORMATION Ugreinov, Malyshev 2
1975 NO INFORMATION Popov, Tsakunov 2
Statistics Concerning the Admission of Poets to the Leningrad Writers’ Union 333
(k) = poet is made a kandidat Soyuza pisatelei or already has this status.
* I am aware that this table is not complete, since, for example, I found
nowhere the details of Nadezhda Polyakova’s acceptance into the Writers’
Union, but found references to her having been accepted in 1956. In other
cases, too, I found discussion of a writer’s application at the admissions
committee meeting, but not the details of their acceptance or rejection.
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Index
Acmeism 242, 324 Berggol'ts, Ol'ga 16, 18, 19, 20, 48, 143
Admoni, Vladimir 32n42, 54, 80, 81, 82, Berlin, Viktor 41, 45, 46, 326
94, 94n33, 110 Betaki, Vasily 68, 87n11, 120, 121, 329, 332
Ageev, Leonid 36, 39, 48, 66, 68, 70n160, Bitov, Andrey 57, 104, 326, 329, 332
75, 87n10, 92n27, 103, 326, 332 Blok, Aleksandr, seminars on see Dmitry
Aigi, Gennady 7 Maksimov
Akhmadulina, Bella 2, 7, 121 Bobyshev, Dmitry 2, 4, 5, 9, 10, 39, 41n77,
Akhmatova, Anna, 8, 13, 32, 116n86, 112, 47, 55, 56, 58, 98, 112, 125, 234–73
324 ‘Baroque’ language 10, 266, 270
and ‘magic choir’ (also known as biography 233–5
‘Akhmatova’s orphans’) 54,56, 57, conflict with Brodsky 9, 233–4, 246,
94, 247, 329 249
Aliger, Margarita 45 emigration 234–5, 263–8
anti-Semitism 31, 31n40, 44, 93, 98, 212, in Sintaksis 60, 61, 62, 63
193 religion 116
Antologiya sovetskoi patologii (Anthology works:
of Soviet pathology) (samizdat ‘Bol'shoe yabloko’ (‘The big apple’)
journal) 64 263–4
archives 26n29, 53, 70, 73, 77, 128n116 ‘Chto-to lepechet’ (‘Something is
Aref 'ev, Aleksandr 33, 329 babbling’) 253–6
Aronzon, Leonid 51, 57, 98–9, 99n44, ‘I zrenie i slukh’ (‘Both vision and
100, 329 hearing’) 251–3
artists (graphic) 7, 33, 33n48, 65, 100, 106, ‘Krylatyi lev sidit s krylatym l'vom’
115, 127, 269, 329 (‘A winged lion sits with a winged
apartment exhibitions 115 lion’) 236–8
bulldozer exhibition 127n112 ‘Nebesnoe v zemnom’ (‘Heavenly in
Aseev, Nikolay 68, 72, 174 the earthly’) 246
Averbakh, Il'ya 39, 326 ‘Nizkoe mesto’ (‘A lowland place’)
Avrora (Aurora) (journal) 36, 101, 103, 239–41
105, 110, 111, 124, 235 ‘Pavlin’ (‘The peacock’) 269–70
‘Polnota vsego’ (‘The fullness of eve-
Baroque language see Bobyshev, Dmitry rything’) 265–6
Basmanova, Marina 233, 246 Russkie tertsiny (Russian tercets)
Batshev, Vladimir 7, 86n8, 96, 97, 121 256–62, 266
354 Index
‘Slon’ (‘The elephant’) 270–1 works:

‘Svin'ya’ (‘The pig’) 271–2 ‘24 dekabrya 1971 goda’
‘Traurnye oktavy’ (‘Funeral octaves’) (‘24 December 1971’) 284
246–51 ‘Babochka’ (‘Butterfly’) 286–93
‘Veshchestvennaya komediya’ ‘Chast' rechi’ (‘A part of speech’)
(‘The material comedy’) 245 284–5
‘Volny’ (‘Waves’) 243, 244–5 ‘Dvadtsat' sonetov k Marii Styuart’
‘Volny vpevye’ (‘Waves for the first (‘Twenty sonnets to Mary
time’) 243–4 Stuart’) 294
‘Vozmozhnosti’ (‘Possibilities’) ‘Instruktsiya opechalennym’
235 (‘Instructions to the disap-
‘Vsya v pyatnyakh’ (‘All in patches’) pointed’) 279–80
242–3, 245 ‘Iyul'skoe intermetstso’ (‘July inter-
‘Zhizn' urbanskaya’ (‘Urbana life’) mezzo’) 278
266–9 ‘Kolybel'naya treskovogo mysa’
‘Zveri svyatogo Antoniya’ (‘Lullaby of Cape Cod’) 302,
(‘The beasts of St Anthony’) 311–15
269–73 ‘Konets prekrasnoi epokhi’
bohemian lifestyle 83, 100, 118 (‘The end of a beautiful era’) 283,
boiler rooms 118–19, 119n95, 123, 239 302, 313
Borisova, Maya 38, 74, 87, 104, 128 ‘Laguna’ (‘Lagoon’) 296–301
Brik, Lilya 71, 174 ‘Litovskii noktyurn'’ (‘Lithuanian
Britanishsky, Vladimir 36, 41, 43, 45, 46, nocturne’) 302, 303–11
66, 69, 68, 70, 107, 326 ‘Novye stansy k Avguste’ (‘New
Brodsky, Iosif 4, 5, 8, 54–6, 58, 58n124, stanzas to Augusta’) 280–1
60, 74, 86, 98, 99, 106, 107, 116, ‘Osennii krik yastreba’ (‘A hawk’s cry
132, 155, 229, 231, 233, 234, 235, in autumn’) 315–21
246, 247, 249, 269, 275–319, 324, ‘Ostanovka v pustyne’ (‘A halt in the
329 desert’) 281, 295
and Anglo-American poetry 10, 281, ‘Peschanye kholmy, porosshie sosnoi’
286 (‘Sandy hills covered with pine
arrest and trial of 50, 55, 77–82, 83 trees’) 294–5
biography 275–7 ‘Pokhorony Bobo’ (‘Funeral of Bobo’)
conflict with Dmitry Bobyshev see 285–6, 294, 309
Bobyshev, Dmitry ‘Temza v Chelsi’ (‘The Thames at
early poetry of 61, 278–82 Chelsea’) 295–6
emigration of 4, 277, 293, 314 ‘Tors’ (‘Torso’) 302
influence of John Donne on 286–7 ‘V pis'me na yug’ (‘In a letter to the
Nobel lecture 1, 2 South’) 278
publication in USSR 64, 67, 93–4 ‘Ya kak Uliss’ (‘I am like Ulysses’)
samizdat edition of 85, 120 279
Index 355
Bukovskaya, Tamara 123, 125, 126, 325, Dudin, Mikhail 88, 89, 110
329, 330 Dunaevskaya, Elena 51, 58, 96, 325
bulldozer exhibition see art
editors 17, 44, 67, 98, 101, 124
cafés popular with poets 62–3, 95, 99, 115 during the Thaw 4, 23, 24, 40, 134, 174
careers see Writers’ Union after the Thaw 77, 102, 103, 104, 105
censorship 2, 34, 40, 58–9, 75, 104, 107, of samizdat 90, 127
124, 126, 174, 230, 253 Ehrenburg, Il'ya 32
Chasy (Hours) (journal) 129 emigration (third wave) 2, 4, 64, 85, 121,
children’s literature 5, 24, 28, 57, 96, 104, 122, 234
122, 123 see also Dmitry Bobyshev, Iosif Brodsky
Chirskov, Fedor 112, 123, 124, 234 Eremin, Mikhail 39, 51, 52, 57, 58, 60, 61,
Chivilikhin, Anatoly 15, 22, 24 233, 325, 326, 329
Chukhontsev, Oleg 7 Erl', Vladimir 95, 97, 98, 99, 119, 329, 330
‘classical’ Russian poetry 9, 98, 135, 139, Etkind, Efim 32n42, 80, 81, 82, 101, 110,
157, 179, 182, 186, 201, 231, 253, 324 122
Club ‘Derzanie’ (‘Daring’) 49–51, 325 Evtushenko, Evgeny 2, 7, 74
Club 81 129, 130
Committee for Work with Young Writers Fonyakov, Il'ya 38, 41, 325
(see Writers’ Union) formalizm (excessive attention to form)
Conceptualism (Moscow) 7, 9 61, 135, 177
Conference of Young Writers see young free verse 88
writers Futurism 27, 32, 34, 54, 71, 98, 157, 235,
Congress of Writers see Writers’ Union 253, 267, 324
see also Viktor Sosnora
Daniel', Yuly 83, 84
Danini, Maya 93, 105, 106, 107, 329, 332 Galushko, Tat'yana 48, 67, 106, 332
Dar, David 39, 39n68, 41, 70, 72, 81, 101, Gasparov, Mikhail 135, 185
112, 115, 326 Gavril'chik, Vladlen 119, 120n101
Davydov, Sergey 28, 29, 326 generations of poets 1, 5, 6, 8, 10, 23, 37, 88,
Den' poezii (Day of poetry) (almanac) 93, 99, 110, 116, 143, 323–4
103, 125, 133, 143, 235 Thaw generation 18, 31, 32, 33, 35, 69,
Derzhavin, Gavriil 9, 266, 267, 268 70n160, 89, 91, 93–4, 155, 277
de-Stalinization 44, 146 post-Thaw generation 4, 51, 86, 91, 92,
Detizdat (state publishing house for 94, 96, 110, 121, 126, 127, 251
children’s literature) 104, 105 tensions between 102–3, 109
dissidence 2, 3, 4, 9, 86, 97, 98, 115, 257 Genis, Aleksandr 151
Dolinin, Vyacheslav 53, 83n1, 90n21, geology 36, 42, 54, 142
116n87, 118, 119 Ginzburg, Lidiya 8, 32n42, 57, 69, 155, 329
Dostoevsky, Fedor 45 Gladkaya, Lidiya 36, 46, 326
drama see Writers’ Union glasnost' 5, 175
356 Index
Gnedich, Tat'yana 37, 109, 110, 122, 143, Kenzheev, Bakhyt 7

327, 331 KGB 63, 78
Gorbanevskaya, Natal'ya 7, 86n8, 121 Khanan, Vladimir 112, 119
Gorbovsky, Gleb 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, 45, Kheifets, Mikhail see Brodsky, samizdat
46, 60, 62, 66, 67, 69, 70–1, 74, edition of
75, 104, 106, 107, 128, 326, 327, Khelenukts 98, 99, 330
329, 332 Khlebnikov, Velemir 34, 45, 71, 100n48,
Gordin, Yakov 38, 54, 57, 67, 79, 93, 120, 103, 185, 186, 253, 254–6, 324
325 Khmel'nitskaya, Tamara 32n42, 45
Gornon, Aleksandr 96 Kholin, Igor' 7
Gorodnitsky, Aleksandr 36, 41, 48, 67, Khrushchev Thaw, see Thaw
70n160, 326, 332 Khrushchev, Nikita 1, 44, 65, 83, 142,
Grachev, Reid 57, 92n27, 325, 329, 332 260
Grani (Borders) (journal) 60, 96, 97, 120, ‘secret speech’ 4, 6, 32, 43, 46, 323
121 Khudozhestvennaya literatura 78
Granin, Daniil 78, 81, 107, 110 Khvostenko, Aleksey (KHVOST) 57, 98,
Great Patriotic War 2, 15, 28, 31, 88, 134, 99, 100, 120, 329, 330
135, 147 Koroleva, Nina 38, 56, 66, 68, 102, 109,
Grigor'ev, Oleg 95, 96, 123, 332 125, 126, 326, 327, 328, 332
Grudinina, Natal'ya 50, 54, 80, 81, 101, Koster (The bonfire) 58, 67
325, 327, 328 Kostsinsky, Kirill 32n42, 57
gruppkom 40, 58, 58n124 Kovalev, Grigory 64
Gudzenko, Rodion 33, 329 Krasil'nikov, Mikhail 34, 35, 46, 47, 51, 53,
GULag 32, 37, 46, 53, 57, 62, 84, 121, 189 325, 329
Krivulin, Viktor 6, 39, 49, 51, 56, 62, 64,
Herzen pedagogical institute 41, 53, 54, 90, 100, 112, 119, 123, 124, 125, 126,
62, 90, 97, 119, 155 127, 129, 325, 327, 330
human rights movement 7, 9, 84, 85, 86, Kropovnitsky, Evgeny 7
115 Kuklin, Lev 70n160, 104, 151–3, 328,
Hungary, Soviet invasion of 43, 46, 47 332
Kulle, Sergey 51, 52, 60, 325, 329
ideinost' (ideological correctness) 61, 136 Kumpan, Elena 37, 48, 326
Ignatova, Elena 51, 325 Kushner, Aleksandr 6, 9, 38, 39, 40, 41, 56,
Il'f and Petrov 45 57, 62, 102, 103, 112, 155–71
institutes of higher education 7, 21, 32, attack on 69
34, 35, 36, 38, 41, 47, 49, 52, 54, biography 155
90, 275 intonation 160–4
intelligentsia 32, 69, 72, 84, 117, 118, 158, lyric persona 76, 158–60
159, 259 and Petersburg tradition 8
Irkutsk 8, 9 and publishing poetry 5, 49, 60–1, 67,
Ivanov, Boris 95, 117, 119, 127, 129 75–6, 133
Index 357
works: Lensoviet Technical Institute39, 47, 90

‘Dykhanie mgly i sveta drozh'’ (‘The Lepta (A mite) (anthology) 127–30
breath of mist of and the quiver Lermontov, Mikhail 167, 196, 217, 219,
of light’) 16970 221
‘I esli v ad ya popadu’ (‘And if I letter boxes (closed institutes) 108, 258
should go to hell’) 163–4 Lianozovo poets 7
‘Kanal’ (‘Canal’) 163 Likhachev, D. S. 72, 174
‘Net, ne privet, a tak, tumannyi’ (‘No, Linetskaya, El'ga 32n42, 37, 101, 110, 122,
not a greeting, but only a hazy’) 123n107
168–9 Literaturnaya gazeta (Literary Gazette)
‘Pri vsem talante i ume’ (‘For all your (newspaper) 18
talent and brains’) 158–9 Litfond 40, 58, 58n124
‘Prosnus' – ne poimu ponachalu’ LITOs 6, 10, 23, 23n26, 24, 35, 36–42, 51,
(‘I wake up and can’t understand 52, 55, 57, 66, 72, 82, 90–1, 101,
at first’) 166–7 102, 105, 111, 114, 118, 124, 155, 234,
‘Prozaik prozu dolgo pishet’ (‘The 275, 323, 325–8
prose writer takes time to write at Avrora 111
his prose’) 156–7 Central 37, 91, 102, 109, 327
‘Pryamaya rech'’ (‘Direct speech’) at the Children’s House of Books 24
161–2 at Detgiz 109
‘Vizhu, vizhu, spozaranku’ (‘I see, I functioning of 38
see, in the early morning’) 164–5 ‘Golos yunosti’ (‘Voice of Youth’) 39,
‘V sadu, zadumavshis' bog vest o 41, 70, 109, 173, 326
chem, o kom’ (‘In the garden, at the House of Culture of the First
contemplating God knows what Five-Year plan 37, 49, 54, 327
or whom’) 167–8 at the House of Officers 24
‘Zhuravl'’ (‘The crane’) 75–6 Industrial Co-operative House of
Kuz'michev, Igor' 67, 155 Culture (PROMKO) 38–9, 41,
Kuz'minsky, Konstantin 57, 63, 64, 91, 112, 173, 326
115, 120, 127, 327, 330 at Leningrad State University 38, 41, 51,
54, 65, 67, 325, 327
lakirovka (varnishing of reality) 44, 45, at the Library Institute 53, 326
151 at the Mining Institute 9, 36, 37, 38, 41,
Leikin, Vyacheslav 95, 108, 118n90 42, 43, 47, 48, 49, 66, 155, 173,
Leningrad Siege 8, 32 326
Leningrad State University 37, 51, 52, 55, ‘Narvskaya zastava’ (‘Narva Gate’) 54,
90, 97, 107, 120, 173, 325, 327, 329 90, 95, 109, 327
1952 demonstration 34–5 at Neva 24
LITO see LITOs Polytechnic Institute 37, 41, 54, 326
Leningradskaya pravda (Leningrad in Pushkin 109, 327
pravda) 48, 69 at Sovetskii pisatel' 23, 24, 107, 111
358 Index
lokomotiv 144 instruction on literature see Party

Loseff, Lev 6, 34, 51, 58, 67, 269, 319, 325, instruction on literature
327, 329 journals 42, 72, 235
samizdat in 60, 63, 96–7, 98
magic choir see Akhmatova writers 2, 3, 79, 81, 85, 99
Maksimov, Dmitry 32n42, 37, 100n48 Moscow State University 7
Malaya sadovaya poets 91, 96, 99, 329 ‘Moskovskoe vremya’ (‘Moscow Time’) 7
Malyarova, Irina 50, 67, 114, 325, 332
Mandel'shtam, Osip 8, 164, 227, 229, 238, Naiman, Anatoly 39, 47, 55, 56, 57, 67, 94,
324 98, 233, 235, 247, 249, 326, 329,
Mandel'shtam, Roal'd 6, 33, 329 332
Maramzin, Vladimir see Brodsky, samiz- Naritsa (Narymov) 60
dat edition of narodnost' (folk ethos) 61, 136, 145
Massie, Suzanne 40, 64, 175 Naumov, Evgeny 23, 38, 54, 55, 65, 325
Mayakovsky, Vladimir 71, 139, 182, 186, Neva (The Neva) (journal) 48, 92, 111,
192, 193, 217, 218, 219, 221 134, 144
men’s poetry 19, 171 see also LITOs
Mikhailov, Yury 34, 35, 51, 53, 325, 329
Mining Institute (Leningrad) 36, 46, OBERIU 32, 99, 100n47, 100n48
48 official publication 4, 5, 25, 60, 103, 123–5,
see also LITOs 130, 323
Mironov, Aleksandr 97, 98, 99, 327, 329, importance of 40, 41, 42, 92, 104
330 process of 17, 43, 59, 66–7, 75n182, 93,
Mochalov, Lev 45, 104, 326, 332 103, 111, 112, 126, 128, 129, 155
Molodaya gvardiya (The young guard ) Okhapkin, Oleg 39, 58n124, 112, 117, 119,
(journal) 42 123, 124, 126, 326, 327, 330
molodaya literatura (young literature) 42,
115, 323 parasitism 78, 79, 81, 100, 118, 199, 276
Molodoi Leningrad (Young Leningrad) paravoz see lokomotiv
(almanac) 23, 25, 48, 75, 92, 93, partiinost' (Party spirit) 61, 136
110, 124, 125, 143 Party 2, 8, 16, 57, 80, 118, 137, 259
Morev, Aleksandr 95, 108, 327 XX Congress 44, 45
Morits, Yunna 7 control over literature 43, 48, 53, 66,
Moscow 7, 8, 13, 39, 65, 74, 77, 78, 79, 83, 114
120, 175, 279, 324 instruction on literature 4, 6, 13, 14, 15,
branch of Writers’ Union see Writers’ 23, 87, 92, 29, 44, 87, 124, 140,
Union 144
career opportunities in 66, 68, 124, membership 35, 35n54, 49
174 Pasternak, Boris 8, 32, 46, 122, 219
human rights movement in 84, 86, Pazukhin, Evgeny 56, 127, 327
121 Petersburg tradition of poetry 8–9
Index 359
philological school 51–2, 329 sex, description of in poetry 229–30, 263,

Plisetsky, German 76 269
poetry readings 14, 39–41, 55, 62, 73, 75, Shel'vakh, Aleksey 96, 101
97, 99, 101, 105–7, 108, 114 Shneiderman, Eduard 65, 108, 126, 127,
poetry competitions 14 327
Poisk (search) (group for young writers) Shraer-Petrov, David 39, 56, 326
107–8 Shvarts, Elena 6, 51, 96, 103, 114, 125, 251,
Polytechnic Institute 40 253, 325, 327
see also LITOs Silver Age 1, 56, 99, 258, 324
post-Stalin Thaw, see Thaw Sintaksis (Syntax) (samizdat journal) 59,
Prague, invasion of 84, 91 60–2, 121, 323
Prigov, Dmitry 7, 65 Sinyavsky, Andrey 83, 84
Prokof 'ev, Aleksandr 30, 73, 78, 80, 81 Slepakova, Nonna 6, 53, 58, 60, 62, 67,
Pudovkina, Elena 50, 119, 325 326, 332
purges 2, 31 Slutsky, Boris 68, 72, 276
SMOG (samoe molodoe obshchestvo
Rein, Evgeny 6, 39, 47, 55, 56, 57, 60, 63, geniev) 96, 97, 98, 99
98, 233, 234, 235, 237, 247, 249, Socialist Realism 4, 5, 17, 18, 19, 33, 44,
326, 329 60, 61, 76, 110, 133–55, 157, 161,
religion 116–17 163, 183, 324
in poetry 116n86, 127, 205, 239, 240, Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr 74, 85, 121
241, 242, 245, 251, 257, 260, 261, Sosnora, Viktor 5, 9, 10, 39, 40, 49, 66,
262, 269, 273, 284, 304 67, 68, 69, 74, 87, 128, 133, 135, 155,
reviewing 21, 24, 72, 75, 93, 113, 128, 129 174–231
Rossiya (nationalist club) 93, 106 admission to Writers’ Union 71–4
Rozhdestvensky, Robert 7, 135 biography 173–5
Rubtsov, Niklolay 65, 327 struggle with censorship 174–5
Ryvina, Elena 17, 45–6, 114, 326, 328 influence of Futurists on 182–3, 185–6,
225, 231
Saigon (café) 115 interest in medieval poetry 176–83
samizdat 4, 5, 9, 53, 72, 96, 100, 101, 130, influence of Pushkin 196–201, 217, 219,
235 221, 222–3, 224
definition of 33–4, 54, 62 social commentary in poems of 187,
growth of 63, 95, 119, 121, 129 189, 193, 194, 195, 201, 216, 217
publications 33, 60–1, 64, 65, 83, 85, use of myth 187, 190, 193–4, 195, 206–8,
96–7, 98, 112, 120, 123, 234 212, 216, 217, 231
Sapgir, Genrikh 7 works:
Secret Speech see Khrushchev ‘Baltiiskoe’ (‘Baltic’) 214–16
Semenov, Gleb 22, 23, 24, 32n42, 35, 36, ‘Bessonitsa’ (‘Insomnia’) 222–4
37, 41, 42, 48, 49, 70, 72, 82, 91, Deva-Ryba (Virgin-fish) 216, 224–31
102, 109, 125, 126, 155, 326, 327 ‘Deva-ryba’ (‘Virgin-fish’) 227–31
360 Index
12 sov (12 owls) 187, 194–5, 201, 214 ‘Slovo o polku Igoreve’ (‘The lay of
‘Dom nadezhd’ (‘House of hopes’) Igor'’s campaign’) 180–2
190 Temy (Themes) 195–201
‘Etot epilog’ (‘This epilogue’) 218–19 Tietta 187–90, 195, 201
‘Fontan slez’ (‘The fountain of tears’) Tridtsat' sem' (Thirty seven) 216–24
196–8 ‘Tsiklopy’ (‘Cyclopses’) 193–4
‘Iskusstvo – svyatynya dlya durakov’ ‘Tsygane’ (‘The gypsies’) 198–201
(‘Art is a sanctum for fools’) V poiskakh razvlechenii (In search of
209 distractions) 183–6
‘Ispoved' Dedala’ (‘The confession of Vsadniki (Horsemen) 73, 174, 176–83,
Daedalus’) 206–9 184, 186, 202
‘Kalika’ (‘Pilgrim’) 178 ‘Vse proshlo. Tak tikho na dushe’
‘Kentavry’ (‘Centaurs’) 190–3 (‘All has passed. My soul is so
Khronika 67 (Chronicle 67) 210 calm’) 219
Kniga yuga (Book of the South) 187, ‘Vykhozhu odin ya. Net dorogi’
190–4 (‘I walk out alone. There is no
‘Kuda bezhish', khudozhnik bednyi’ road’) 221–2
(‘Where are you running, poor ‘Ya tebya otvoruyu u vsekh semei u
artist’) 190 vsekh nevest’ (‘I will steal you
‘O noch' Sibirskaya’ (‘O Siberian from all families and all brides’)
night!’) 190 219
‘Ot"ezd so vzmor'ya’ (‘Leaving the ‘Ya vas lyubil. Lyubov' esche – byt'
coast’) 218 mozhet’ (‘I loved you. Love still
‘Pervyi sneg’ (‘First snow’) 184–6 could exist’) 219–20
‘Pir Vladimira’ (‘Vladimir’s feast’) ‘Za polyarnym krugom’ (‘In the
178 Arctic Circle’) 187–90
Poemy i ritmicheskie rasskazy ‘Zavershenie’ (‘Conclusion’)
(Poems and rhythmic stories) 224
209–10 ‘Z izyumskim bugrom’ (‘Beyond the
‘Poslednie pesni Boyana’ (‘The last Izyum knoll’) 177–8
songs of Boyan’) 179 Znaki (Signs) 201, 205
Prodolzhenie (Continuation) 201, Sovetskii pisatel' 22, 23, 24, 25, 67, 70, 93,
205 95, 107, 111, 128, 174
‘Prokrustovo lozhe’ (‘The bed of Soviet poetry 3, 4, 5, 13, 14–20, 133–72
Procrustes’) 194 fashion for 2, 3, 14, 25, 31, 32
P'yanyi angel (Drunken angel ) forms of 42, 60–1, 87, 88, 89, 135–6, 139,
201–5 156–7, 171
‘Ritoricheskaya poema’ (‘Rhetorical return of lyric 2, 3, 4, 6, 13–20
poem’) 210–14 themes of 19, 134–5, 146–7, 151, 154,
‘Slova slaby’ (‘Words are weak’) 157, 171
225–7 sponsorship 4, 68, 72, 74, 155, 174, 251
Index 361
Stalin era 1, 2, 6, 13, 16, 17, 20, 26, 27, 30–1, Vail', Boris 53, 326
33, 37, 59n125, 99, 134, 136, 139, Vail', Petr 151
142, 147, 146, 148 Vakhtin, Boris 67, 68, 75, 105, 106, 107
Stratanovsky, Sergey 6, 51, 115, 119, 325, Vampilov, Aleksandr 8
327 Vinogradov, Leonid 39, 51, 52, 58, 325,
student poetry see LITOs 326, 329
student publishing 41, 47, 90, 120, 34, vodka, importance of 51
52–4, 65, 89–90, 95, 120 Voice of America 47, 309
syllabo-tonic see ‘classical’ Russian Vol'f, Sergey 123, 326, 329
poetry Volokhonsky, Anri 57, 100, 329
Voznesenskaya, Yuliya 127, 129
Taigin, Boris 63, 64, 327 Voznesensky, Andrey 2, 135
tamizdat 4, 5, 60, 84, 97, 112, 119, 120–1, VUZ see institutes of higher education
123, 175
Tarutin, Oleg 36, 48, 67, 326, 332 women’s literature 20, 143–6
television, writing for 58, 111, 118 Writers Union 3, 4, 5, 14, 106, 107, 112,
Thaw 8, 13, 32–3, 36, 43 113, 122, 123
end of 53, 77, 83–4 Congress of 15, 19–20, 25, 44, 88–9,
promotion of non-Party intelligentsia 134, 140
during 32n42, 35, 49–50 Leningrad branch 15, 20, 48, 66, 74, 79,
Soviet literature during 2, 3, 4, 6, 14, 15, 87, 102, 114, 124, 134
31, 40, 42, 70, 73, 89, 108 Board of 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29,
see also Soviet poetry 30, 31, 66, 71, 72, 73, 75, 80, 82, 87,
theatre, writing for 21, 58, 118 89, 92
thick journals 6, 22, 42, 92, 133, 143, 147 Committee for admissions 22,
37 (journal) 129 25–31
Toporov, Viktor 51, 325 Committee for Work with Young
Toropygin, Vladimir 79, 101, 110, 331 Writers 21, 22, 24, 25, 35, 40, 81,
translation 37, 40, 54, 96, 97, 101, 1222, 110, 111, 114, 128
123, 135, 175 Dramatists’ Section 24
translation section see Writers’ Union kandidat membership of 26, 30
Tsvetaeva, Marina 50, 71, 89, 153, 217, 219, membership of and career in 8, 29, 30,
221, 226, 324 41, 62, 67–74, 104, 331–3
Tsvetkov, Aleksey 7 Poetry Section 22, 23, 26, 101
policy 20–5, 31, 74–5, 77–9, 80–2,
Uflyand, Vladimir 6, 40, 45–6, 51, 52, 57, 87–9, 90–1, 140
58, 60, 61, 106, 233, 325, 329 Secretariat of 20, 21, 25, 30, 31, 70, 72,
unofficial culture 4, 7, 64, 65, 66, 95, 112, 73, 75, 78, 82, 89, 105, 106, 107,
116–19, 122, 123, 129, 130 108, 109, 113, 114, 123, 128, 328
unofficial literature 49, 85, 86, 94, 115, Translation section 67, 80, 94
117, 129 Moscow branch 28, 80
362 Index
Yasnov, Mikhail 51, 95, 96, 122–3, 325 youth literature (molodaya literatura) 42,
young writers 4, 6 155, 324
conferences of 25, 43–6, 47, 48, 52, 66, Yupp, Mikhail 96, 327
67, 72, 92, 101, 102, 105, 111–12,
118, 124, 275 Zhdanovshchina 8, 13
difficulties facing 4, 17, 21, 40, 54, 59, 67, Zvezda (The Star) (journal) 21, 87, 92,
68–9, 75, 92, 102, 104, 105, 124–7 111, 134
unofficial groups of 3, 7, 8, 33, 34, 39,
51–9, 91, 94–100, 115–17, 129,
329–30
see also Writers’ Union, LITOs
Series Editor:
Andrew Kahn, University of Oxford
Russian Transformations publishes studies across the entire extent of
Russian literature, thought and culture from the medieval period to the
present. The series gives special emphasis to the kinds of transformation
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that have been characteristic of Russian history generated radical
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Vol. 1 Andreas Schonle

The Ruler in the Garden. Politics and Landscape Design in Imperial
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ISBN 978-3-03911-113-8
Vol. 2 Emily Lygo

Leningrad Poetry 1953–1975. The Thaw Generation.
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ISBN 978-3-03911-370-5
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many now-famous figures began writing. The author describes the
institutions, official events, unofficial groups, and informal activities
that were attended by many young poets, including the pre-eminent
poet of this generation, Iosif Brodsky. Alongside a detailed study
of Brodsky’s work from the early 1970s are close readings of two
other major poets from this generation whose work has often been
overlooked, Viktor Sosnora and Dmitry Bobyshev.
Emily Lygo studied Russian at the University of Oxford, where

she completed her DPhil in 2006. She is now Lecturer in Russian
at the University of Exeter.
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Russian Transformations: Literature, Thought, Culture

Leningrad Poetry 1953–1975

Leningrad Poetry 1953–1975

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Lygo, Emily, 1977-

1. Russian poetry--Russia (Federation)--Saint Petersburg--History and

© Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2010

All rights reserved.

Note on Transliteration of Russian Words and Names xi

I would like to thank the Sub-Faculty of Russian at the University of

I have used the British Standard System of Cyrillic Translation throughout.

and reputations of his contemporaries who remained in the USSR and

3 The proximity of official and unpublished poets is reflected in some contemporary

are undoubtedly worthy of attention include Vladimir Uflyand (1937–

6 Anatoly Kobenkov, ‘Irkutsk: novoe polozhenie’, Znamya 1 (2001), 178–86.

There are no close connections between their styles of poetry, either.

The Post-Stalin Thaw 1953–1964

The Return of Lyric Poetry to the Soviet Canon

1 The whole ‘Leningrad affair’ is described in T. M. Goryaeva, Isklyuchit' vsyakie upomi-

this change as soon as possible; their impetus played an important role in

of its resulting proliferation in Leningrad, which was significant enough

7 ‘Stenogramma diskussii leningradskikh pisatelei o lirike’, TsGALI St Petersburg:

recorded) criticised the inertia of the establishment, the banality of form

9 ‘Stenogramma diskussii leningradskikh pisatelei o lirike’, TsGALI St Petersburg:

By ridiculing the excesses of the kolkhoz theme in Stalinist Socialist Realism,

12 Ol'ga Berggol'ts, ‘Razgovor o lirike’, Literaturnaya gazeta, 16 April 1953, p. 3; and

These he contrasted with the themes, significantly fewer in number, which

The Investment in Young Writers

While exhortations to transform poetry in the new, post-Stalin era were

19 Vtoroi vsesoyuznyi s"ezd sovetskikh pisatelei, p. 71.

22 ‘Protokoly zasedanii pravleniya 1954’, TsGALI St Petersburg: f. 371; op. 1; d. 216.

In the ‘thick’ journals in the 1950s we find intermittent selections of young

Chivilikhin’s recommendations for improvement in the work of the sec-

25 ‘Protokoly zasedanii pravleniya 1955’, TsGALI St Petersburg: f. 371; op. 1; d. 244.

1. To consider work with young writers to be a direct obligation of

28 Chetvertyi s"ezd soyuza pisatelei SSSR: Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow: Sovetskii

applications of three poets, B. Raevsky, Sergey Davydov, and Vyacheslav

not considered as talented as Davydov, however, had to have published

Yankovsky, another member of the Committee for Admissions, identi-

This comment caused consternation among members of the Board, how-

38 ‘Stenogrammy zasedanii pravleniya 1956’, TsGALI St Petersburg: f. 371; op. 1;

accepted and the question of an individual’s responsibility for the crimes

The Student Poetry Movement

39 There is no trace of Merzon as a writer, however; he is not listed in the encyclopaedia

49 For a description of the development of samizdat in the USSR see: Lyudmila

Krasil'nikov and Mikhailov were thrown out of the university as a result

58 El'ga L'vovna Linetskaya. Materialy k biografii iz literaturnogo naslediya, comp. by

throughout the city, and groups sprouted like mushrooms in institutes.

63 Massie, The Living Mirror, p. 28.

or ‘PROMKO’ in Leningrad.66 David Shraer-Petrov (b. 1936) describes

organised a public evening of poetry entitled ‘Pervaya vstrecha’ (‘First

Aleksandr Kushner has described how poetry readings became

70 Massie, The Living Mirror, p. 114.

Institute.73 These poets included: Viktor Berlin, regarded as the star of

Genuine poetry is unthinkable without intensive searching, without laborious pros-

79 Gleb Semenov, ‘V puti’, Molodaya Gvardiya 3 (1956), 3–11.

spoken, sometimes demotic language, as in the first stanza of Britanishsky’s

Дождик был совсем, как паутина:

publishing house or journal, however, since editors were, strictly speaking,

He mentioned Bertolt Brecht, Ernest Hemingway (specifically The Old

80 ‘Pyataya oblastnaya konferentsiya molodykh pisatelei’, TsGALI St Petersburg: f. 371;

81 ‘Pyataya oblastnaya konferentsiya molodykh pisatelei’, TsGALI St Petersburg: f. 371;

wide variation of influences, something surprising for such a young poet. In