logo
episode-header-image
Dec 2023
9m 11s

Anna Akhmatova: The poet who defied a re...

Bbc World Service
About this episode

The great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova lived through some of the darkest chapters of Soviet history, but never stopped writing even though the communist regime repeatedly tried to silence her. One of Anna's most famous poems, Requiem, is about her son's arrest and the Stalinist terror.

In 2022, art historian Era Korobova told Tatyana Movshevich about the poet's tumultuous relationship with her son.

(Photo: Anna Akhmatova (second from right, at a Soviet writers' conference in 1965. Credit: Getty Images)

Up next
Yesterday
The man who said ‘no’ to Disney
In 1941, Walt Disney made a tempting offer to a fellow pioneer of the animation industry, Quirino Cristiani - the author of the first animated feature film.Cristiani was an Italian immigrant raised in Argentina who built a career creating animated political satires in the early d ... Show More
9m 55s
Jul 10
Ni Una Menos women’s movement in Argentina
On 3 June 2015, tens of thousands of people gathered in the capital, Buenos Aires, and in dozens of cities and towns demanding an end to violence against women. There were demonstrations in Chile and Uruguay in solidarity too. Argentina was reporting a female murder rate of one e ... Show More
9m 31s
Jul 9
Argentina’s national genetics bank created to identify stolen babies
In 1982, Argentine geneticist Victor Penchaszadeh was living in exile in New York when he received a call that would change the course of his career. Two founding members of the campaign group, the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, were asking for his help to find their kidnappe ... Show More
10m 41s
Recommended Episodes
Dec 2017
Art in Revolutionary Russia
The Russian Revolution of 1917 led not just to huge political and social change, but to a new artistic freedom. Russian avant-garde artists like Malevich, Kandinsky and Chagall flourished in the immediate aftermath of the revolution. One of their greatest supporters was art curat ... Show More
10m 26s
Jul 2021
The Rise of Stalin
How did a young boy from Georgia become a merciless politician who shaped the Soviet Empire in his own brutal image? Historian and bestselling author, Simon Sebag Montifiore, is back on the podcast to talk to Dan about the rise of Joseph Stalin, a man who caused the death and suf ... Show More
29m 54s
Apr 2022
Anna Karenina
Ben Okurum’un bu bölümünde konu, Rus ve Dünya Edebiyatı’nın en önemli romanlarından biri olan Anna Karenina. Eserleri kadar, inişli çıkışlı hayatı, var oluş sancılarıyla da tanınan edebiyat dehası Lev Tolstoy’un bu ölümsüz aşk hikâyesini Deniz Yüce Başarır, yazar Murat Gülsoy ile ... Show More
1h 26m
Oct 2023
87. Tolstoy: War and the Russian Empire
Tolstoy was one of the greatest writers of all time. His books have constructed how we think about Russian imperial history. But he was not just an observer, he was also a participant. As a young man, Tolstoy fought in several of Russia's imperial wars– against the Chechens and t ... Show More
54m 23s
Jan 2019
The Master and Margarita: Devilish satire
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, which tells the fantastical story of a visit of the devil to the Soviet Union, is considered to be one of the most successful Russian novels of the 20th Century. Written in secret in the 1930s when Stalinist repression of the arts was ... Show More
40m 31s
Jul 2023
Sofi Oksanen: Purge
Bestselling author Sofi Oksanen answers readers' questions about her novel Purge. It's a harrowing story of sexual violence, betrayal and retribution which charts the troubled history of Estonia during and after the Second World War. Told through the lives of two women, the story ... Show More
50m 6s
Nov 2019
The Russian civil war: How the Soviets rose to power
The Russian Civil war was a struggle for power at every level – from the villages to the imperial centre, with more than 11 foreign powers involved as well as nationalists, from Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states, fighting for independence. This conflict, which took place a hu ... Show More
39m 51s
Dec 2021
Barbara Martin, "Dissident Histories in the Soviet Union: From De-Stalinization to Perestroika" (Bloomsbury, 2019)
In Dissident Histories in the Soviet Union: From De-Stalinization to Perestroika (Bloomsbury,, 2019), Barbara Martin traces the careers of four prominent figures: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Roy Medvedev, Aleksandr Nekrich and Anton Antonov-Ovseenko. Based on extensive archival resea ... Show More
1h 1m
Jan 2024
Sowjetunion - Lenins Tod
Er war Revolutionsführer, Gründer der Sowjetunion und verfolgte seine Gegner mit brutaler Härte: Bei seinem Tod mit nur 53 Jahren hinterließ Lenin ein machtpolitisches Vakuum. Sein Nachfolger wurde – gegen Lenins Willen – Stalin.**********Ihr hört in dieser "Eine Stunde History": ... Show More
47m 28s