Last year marked the 111th birth anniversary of one of the greatest writers of twentieth-century Russia, Nadezhda Mandelstam. Doris Lessing has said on her writing, “None, not even Solzhenitsyn, has written better.” Through Hope Against Hope and its sequel, Hope Abandoned , Nadezhda superbly documented the full horror of a totalitarian regime. Interestingly, ‘Nadezhda', in Russian, means ‘hope'. As the surviving widow of a banished poet under Stalin, Nadezhda's poignant story can be dismissed only at one's peril. A brilliant critique of the Stalinist regime, Nadezhda's story of a hounded woman under the Soviet Government helps us understand the difficulty of those times. Born as Nadezhda Yakovlevna Khazin, she was married to poet Osip Mandelstam, who fell out of favour with the Stalin Government for composing a poem.

‘We live, deaf to the land beneath us, Ten steps away no one hears our speeches… And every killing is a treat. For the broad-chested Ossete.' Osip has also called Stalin a ‘Kremlin mountaineer' and ‘peasant-slayer' in some other versions of the poem. It is said that this poem was never published, but narrated and memorised by Nadezhda and some others before it apparently reached Stalin's ears. It may seem surprising today, how an artist could have been driven to his death by rulers who felt threatened by an unpublished satirical poem, but such criticism was far from welcome in those days, and Osip ended up paying a huge price for it.

MIDNIGHT ARREST

One fateful night, under the watchful gaze of a guest who is temporarily also playing the role of an official spy, Osip is arrested from the Mandelstam's apartment in Moscow.

In the raid, the Chekists (members of the Cheka, secret police) take with them several documents and manuscripts from the apartment. This wasn't unusual in those days. Anybody considered to be an ‘enemy of the people' would constantly be hounded by the State before a worse fate descended upon them. Osip was released from prison only to be exiled. Nadezhda was allowed to accompany him. Time spent in the prison affected Osip so much that he feared the Chekists were coming to arrest him any moment. One night, he attempted a suicide and jumped from the hospital window in Cherdyn. Nadezhda rushed to him and tried to grab his arm, but was left holding an empty jacket. He survived with a few broken bones. They were then sent to Voronezh where they were provided with some identity papers. But with no jobs to be had, life wasn't easy and they survived on the mercy of a few friends who helped secretly.

NEW LEASE OF LIFE

Though gloomy, the years in Voronezh gave a new lease of life to Osip. It was followed by a miracle. As his time in Voronezh neared its end, Osip was allowed to live in Moscow. But the miracle, as all miracles, was short-lived, and he was arrested once again and sent to the Soviet camps. Osip died of starvation and sickness in 1938 in one of the camps.

In a twisted sense, Osip was relieved but Nadezhda had to carry the burden of his death. She was constantly on the run, and survived by giving lessons of English in remote provincial towns. Preserving Osip's poems became a focus, and she saved many of them by hiding them in shoes or by memorising them. Towards the end of her life, when the terror of the regime was decreasing, and she was finally allowed to live in Moscow for long, she started writing the memoirs. Though she was fluent in English, she wrote her books in Russian, which were translated into English by Max Hayward. October 31 was her 111th birth anniversary. She died at the age of 81 in the year 1980.

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